More information here. Here's a quote from the announcement (some may disagree with the first nine words but the rest is exciting): Best place to live and teach in the U.S.: The Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana, the only law school in the state, anticipates hiring a full-time, tenure-track professor […]
Law prof Margot Pollans has written Drinking Water Protection and Agricultural Exceptionalism, which you may want to read in light of the water crisis in Flint. Here's the abstract: Providing safe drinking water is a basic responsibility of government. The US system is inefficient, unfair, and sets up local water utilities to fail. Under the Safe Drinking […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) today proposed new debt-collection regulations described by the agency here. The agency's press release summarizes the proposal's key provisions this way: Collect the correct debt: Collectors would have to scrub their files and substantiate the debt before contacting consumers. For example, collectors would have to confirm that they have sufficient […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. It has more information than the article abstract, but is a lot shorter than the article. The article itself is here. In other debt collection news, Law360.com has its preview of the debt collection rules here (behind paywall). The headline: CFPB Enforcement Actions Could Guide Debt Collection Rules. UPDATE: InsideARM.com reports […]
The American Banker (behind paywall) and Bloomberg report speculations.
In this short essay (subscription possibly required), public-interest lawyer Arthur Bryant explains why he thinks the Supreme Court's decision in Spokeo v. Robins is good news for consumers seeking to enforce their rights to statutory damages.
by Jeff Sovern We now have reason to believe that validation notices fail to convey to consumers the information Congress wants consumers to have. If the CFPB addresses validation notices in its regulation, courts can simply follow the Bureau's lead. But it could be years before that regulation takes effect. What should courts do in the […]
The Hill reports that the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission on Friday told phone companies that they should start providing free technology for their customers to block robocalls and spam texts. Last year, The Hill explains, the FCC told wireless carriers that they could provide robocall-blocking technology said without running afoul of any rules. […]
Christopher T. Robertson of Arizona and Harvard's Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics has written A Trojan Horse? How Expansion of the First Amendment Threatens Much More than the Regulation of Off-Label Drugs, forthcoming in the Ohio State Law Journal. Here is the abstract: Scholars, advocates, and courts have begun to recognize […]
by Jeff Sovern We need to make some revisions to our validation article discussion draft, in Part V A.1., beginning on page 27, and captioned "Did Respondents Understand that The Letter Said They Could Dispute the Validity of the Debt?" Consequently, please don't use that part of the article until the new version is on the web. […]