ThinkProgress reports: Bank of America does not have to pay a $1.3 billion penalty assessed years ago, an appeals court ruled Monday. A jury found the megabank guilty of fraud in 2013, after Department of Justice (DOJ) officials decided not to settle a case involving a program run by its subsidiary Countrywide. Countrywide employees created […]
by Jeff Sovern From a BBC News report: The average Norwegian has 33 apps, the Norwegian Consumer Council says, whose terms and conditions together run longer than the New Testament. To prove the "absurd" length, the council got Norwegians to read each of them out in real time on their website. The reading finished on […]
Here (behind a paywall, unfortunately).
A few weeks ago, we posted an item headed Announcement for Students and Others:Antitrust and Consumer Protection State Legislation Monitoring Initiative. The deadline for submissions has been moved to June 10. For convenience, I've reposted the announcement below the fold.
by Jeff Sovern The House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services has released the draft of a bill it is considering that would hamstring the CFPB and at least temporarily preserve pre-dispute arbitration clauses, among other things. Here is how the Subcommittee describes the CFPB portion of the bill: The bill includes a provision […]
Here. In the Maryland Bar Journal. And here is the abstract: This article examines current trends in debt buyer litigation, including a review of recent regulatory actions and the impact of debt buyer lawsuits on individual consumers and on small claims courts. The article calls for a ban on the sale of consumer junk debt […]
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit yesterday affirmed its 2014 holding that a debt collector violates the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act when it files a proof of claim in a bankruptcy case on a debt that it knows to be time-barred. In this case, the debt collector argued that the earlier […]
by Jeff Sovern A press release is here. ALTA is the American Land Title Association. I haven't read the study (I couldn't find the actual report of the study on the web site), but it reports an increase in consumers who read the mortgage disclosures from 74% to 92% since the TRID disclosures went into effect. The […]
The Washington Post reports today that DeVry University and the University of Phoenix will stop using pre-dispute mandatory arbitration clauses that bar students from filing class-action lawsuits or otherwise taking their grievances to the courts. The story is here. In a related story, the Post recently explained that "It's almost impossible for students to sue […]