As the Blog of the Legal Times explains: Continuing its crackdown on companies that provide debt settlement services, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today announced that a payment processing company will pay $1.376 million to settle allegations that it collected illegal up-front fees from consumers. The CFPB said Tacoma, Wash.-based Meracord LLC helped debt-relief service […]
by Paul Alan Levy A Tampa-area company called “Federal Verification Co.,” which operates under “dozens of names,” according to the author of this exposé on a local television station, has filed a defamation lawsuit against its online critics, and is using vague allegations about defamation on a number of sites as an excuse for a […]
by Deepak Gupta Back in June, I blogged about my firm's constitutional challenge to New York's credit-card surcharge law — a law that aims to protect credit card company profits by preventing merchants from communicating the true cost of credit to consumers. This morning, U.S District Judge Jed Rakoff issued a fantastic 35-page opinion agreeing […]
by Jeff Sovern Which happens first: a win by the NY Giants or Congress resolves the budget impasse? Put your responses in the comments (Disclosure: though I am in New York, I am not a Giants fan).
Great editorial in the Times today calling on the Obama Administration to stop obstructing the long-delayed rule to prevent backover injuries, i.e. injuries from cars backing into people the drivers can't see — injuries that disproportionately befall young children. Representing a coalition of safety advocates and parents, we here at Public Citizen filed suit last […]
When the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare's individual mandate last year in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, it was not a total victory for reform: because the Court held that the Act's Medicaid expansion imposed too coercive a spending condition on states, states were left with a choice whether or not to accept federal […]
By Paul Bland, On Twitter @PblandBland This is a case with very painful facts – according to the complaint, a Kaiser patient went in to see his doctor and was told he had a particular type of cancer that his doctor wasn’t familiar with, but would do “internet research” about, that he might die within […]
That's the question addressed by law professor Linda Simard in her article A View from Within the Fortune 500: An Empirical Study of Negative Value Class Actions and Deterrence. Here is the abstract: This paper takes a look inside the Fortune 500 to analyze the deterrent effect of negative value class actions. The study focuses […]
Robert C. Hockett of Cornell has written Post-Bubble Foreclosure-Prevention and -Mitigation Options in Seattle. Here's the abstract: This paper, commissioned by the Seattle City Council, takes the measure of Seattle's post-bubble negative equity and foreclosure problems, estimates numbers of underwater loans that have benefitted by existing federal, state and local programs, and recommends several options […]
The Report is here. From the press release: Total cost of credit declined: The CFPB found that the total cost of credit declined by two percentage points between 2008 and 2012. The total cost of credit includes all fees, interest, and finance charges paid by the consumer to the card issuer. The decline in the […]