Read Warren: Wall Street using small banks to weaken rules in today's The Hill.
In a case we've discussed before about the wage/hour claims of a class of Applebee's workers, the Second Circuit today delivered an important victory today for class-action plaintiffs. The court held that the Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Comcast v. Behrend does not foreclose the certification of a class action where the plaintiffs' damages must […]
The Federal Trade Commission announced its annual summary of activity enforcing the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act: Over the past year, the Federal Trade Commission has continued its vigorous work on behalf of U.S. consumers suffering from unlawful debt collection practices, including bringing law enforcement actions against abusive and fraudulent operations, conducting education and public […]
Yesterday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released "a report highlighting the top complaints for reverse mortgages. According to the report, consumers are frustrated with their loan terms, servicer runarounds, and foreclosure problems. To help consumers who already have a reverse mortgage, the CFPB [also issued] an advisory with tips on how to plan ahead to […]
Here. An excerpt: At the center of the regulations being considered, the people familiar with the matter said, is a requirement that lenders assess whether borrowers can repay loans — interest and principal — at the end of a two-week period by examining their income, other debts and their payment history. Few people can, the […]
A beer enthusiast blog carries a great open letter from a small microbrew company called Old Ox Brewery, responding to a trademark opposition claiming that because an ox and a bull are both bovines, indeed an ox is a castrated bull, consumers could be confused about whether Red Bull is somehow associated with Old Ox. […]
Two weeks ago, we told you about a lawsuit challenging a Georgia county's practice of imprisoning individuals who could not pay court fees. Now, another lawsuit has been filed in the same vein. The location happens to be Ferguson, Mo., which in 2013 "collected $2.6 million in court fines and fees, mainly on traffic violations […]
Andrew Cheyne, Pamela Mejia, Laura Nixon, and Lori Dorfman, all of the Berkeley Media Studies Group, have written Food and Beverage Marketing to Youth, Current Obesity Reports, September 2014. Here's the abstract: After nearly a decade of concern over the role of food and beverage marketing to youth in the childhood obesity epidemic, American children […]
Ronald J. Mann of Columbia has written Do Defaults on Payday Loans Matter? Here's the abstract: This essay examines the effect on a borrower’s financial health of failure to repay a payday loan. Recent regulatory initiatives suggest an inclination to add an “ability to pay” requirement to payday-loan underwriting that would be fundamentally inconsistent with […]