The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released today a special edition of its Supervisory Highlights that reports on unlawful junk fees uncovered in deposit accounts and in multiple loan servicing markets, including in mortgage, student, and payday lending. The CFPB explains that “[t]hese unlawful fees corrode family finances, force up families’ banking and borrowing costs, and […]
Michael Blasie of Seattle has written Regulating Plain Language, forthcoming in the Wisconsin Law Review. Here is the abstract: What one scholar coined a “quiet revolution” in consumer contracts has been a half century in the making. And the revolution extends well beyond consumer contracts. Legislatures and regulators passed over seven hundred plain language laws […]
It’s headlined The Dirty Little Secret of Credit Card Rewards Programs, by Chenzi Xu and Jeffrey Reppucci. After referring to a study that found that when rewards go up, so do the fees merchants pay for credit card processing, the op-ed explains: The vast majority of merchants pass these costs on to consumers by charging more for their products […]
Over at his Technology and Marketing Blog, Eric Goldman points to a recent district court decision issuing a preliminary injunction against a solar installation company which, according to the decision, engaged in a series of shady practices vis-a-vis consumers who agreed to use its solar panel installation services. In an action brought jointly by the […]
Alexandros Antoniou of the University of Essex has written Swear-Vertising: When Does the Advertising Watchdog Bark? 27 Communications Law – Journal of Computer, Media and Telecommunications Law 111 (2022). Here’s the abstract: The article examines the extent to which advertisers can expressly use, or use by implication, swear words in their advertising. It reviews the […]
The New Republic, asked conservative Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer, who often espouses the positions asserted by the banking industry during hearings of the House Financial Services Committee, if he reads the fine print on his contracts. The answer: ““I don’t read the fine print on any of that stuff,” he said. “I’m a busy guy.” Among […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in recent actions against entities it calls “repeat offenders” has zeroed in on flagrant violations of the Military Lending Act (MLA), which is meant to safeguard active-duty military members and their families from financial abuses. The MLA has features perfect for military families in search of a loan: it caps […]
After the City of Edina, Minnesota, banned the sale of flavored tobacco products, R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco industry companies sued, arguing the law is preempted by the federal Tobacco Control Act. In a unanimous per curiam opinion, the Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision holding that the law is not preempted. Agreeing with […]
Earlier today the Supreme Court announced that it would take the case in which the Fifth Circuit had held the CFPB’s funding mechanism was unconstitutional, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America, Limited. The Bureau had asked the Court to hear the case during the current term but the Court instead decided to […]
In Consumer Law as Work Law (forthcoming Calif. L. Rev. 2024), law professor Jonathan Harris describes the possibilities and challenges of turning to consumer law as part of an integrated work law to help remediate the bargaining power asymmetries between firms and workers. Here is the abstract: In recent decades, firms have radically transformed labor […]