DC Court Narrows Prosecutors Options for Searching Trump Inauguration Protest Web Site

by Paul Alan Levy Late last week, DC Superior Court Chief Judge Robert Morin issued an opinion  explaining his oral ruling at last month’s hearing on a search warrant issued to DreamHost demanding production of its files pertaining to DisruptJ20.org, and rejecting the rival proposed orders filed by the prosecutors and by DreamHost. We were […]

LA Times’s David Lazarus: Despite Equifax hack, GOP lawmakers want to deregulate credit agencies

Here.  The whole column is definitely worth a read, but here's an excerpt: The FCRA Liability Harmonization Act is particularly noxious. Authored by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), the bill would cap actual and statutory damages for class actions involving credit agencies at $500,000, and completely eliminate punitive damages. Loudermilk said Friday that his bill “is […]

Holding Equifax Accountable

Last week, in an opinion piece in the Washington Post, WashU law professor Danielle D'Onfro proposed one way to hold Equifax accountable: "some old-fashioned judge-made doctrine." According to D'Onfro, "the data economy has outgrown our consumer protection regulations and we are on our own." She refers to a "Swiss cheese system of regulations that carry […]

Have the Arbitration Sharks Jumped the Shark?

by Jeff Sovern On Saturday, I posted an entry, Kaplinsky & Levin Concede "Consumers rarely pursue individual arbitration" But Miss Mark on Why. Maybe it irritated Alan and Mark, because they then posted Professor Sovern Disagrees with Senator Warren and Concedes that Consumers Do Well in Arbitration But Raises Another Red Herring. I guess I […]

CFPB sues Top Notch Funding for lying in loan offers to NFL players, Deepwater Horizon victims, and 9/11 first responders

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed suit today against Top Notch Funding and two individuals associated with the company for lying in loan offerings to consumers who were awaiting payment from settlements in legal cases or from victim-compensation funds. These consumers included former National Football League players suffering from neurological disorders, victims of the Deepwater […]

CFPB acts against illegal student-loan debt-collection lawsuits

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau yesterday took action against the National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts and their debt collector, Transworld Systems, Inc., for illegal student loan debt collection lawsuits. Consumers were sued for private student loan debt that the companies couldn’t prove was owed or was too old to sue over. These lawsuits relied on […]

“Opponents Sharpen Knives Over Impending U.S. Payday Loan Rule”

The New York Times reports that "[l]obbyists and Republican lawmakers are gearing up for battle over a new U.S. regulation that is likely to dent profits in the $6 billion short-term, high-interest "payday" loan industry. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is expected in coming days to release a long-anticipated rule curbing payday lending, now […]

Massachusetts sues Equifax over the hack under its consumer-protection statute

As explained in this detailed press release, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey today filed the nation’s first enforcement action against Equifax alleging that the company failed to protect the personal information of almost three million Massachusetts residents. Healey claims that “that Equifax knew about the vulnerabilities in its system for months, but utterly failed to keep the […]