The Blog of LegalTimes reports: When Morgan Drexen Inc. found itself in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's crosshairs, the company, which works with law firms to provide debt relief services to consumers, initiated a response that's proving to be both unusually aggressive and public. The CFPB filed suit against the company earlier this week in […]
Peter B. Rutledge of Georgia and Christopher R. Drahozal of Kansas have written 'Sticky' Arbitration Clauses?: The Use of Arbitration Clauses after Concepcion and Amex. Here's the abstract: We present the results of the first empirical study of the extent to which businesses have switched to arbitration after AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion. After the […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau yesterday issued this report "detailing mortgage servicing problems at banks and nonbanks. The report also found that many nonbanks lack robust systems for ensuring they are following federal laws." (quoting press release) According to the CFPB's press release, the agency found Sloppy account transfers: The rights to manage a loan […]
This article by Michael Fletcher discusses a new report showing that incomes in the U.S. haven't come close to recovering from the government-determined official end of the recession in mid-2009. Here's an excerpt and then two charts depicting income levels and unemployment over the last 12 and 1/2 years: The buying power of Americans continues […]
by Brian Wolfman We have covered the interaction between consumer protection law and efforts to stem the obesity epidemic, including NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's effort to ban large-sized sugary drinks (which has failed so far in the New York courts). If that topic interests you, I think you'll want to watch two videos, which are […]
At the end of the last century and the beginning of this one, one political party was anti-litigation, the other more friendly. Why? By last year's election, the issue had faded away, at least nationally. Why? These issues are taken up in "Unspoken Truths and Misaligned Interests: Political Parties and the Two Cultures of Civil […]
As the Consumerist reports, "[b]ecause there are apparently not enough studies to convince the Food and Drug Administration that controversial chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) should not be used in just about every form of food packaging, yet another study has been published linking BPA to childhood obesity. Meanwhile, a separate study released today showed a possible […]
Read about it here. Here are excerpts: The closed-door meeting [with President Obama] included Richard Cordray, the newly-confirmed director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as well as the chairs of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the U.S. Securities and […]
By Paul Bland @PblandBland The last few years have often been pretty discouraging for consumer advocates who are trying to preserve their clients’ rights to take disputes to court. As the Supreme Court majority’s madcap love affair with forced arbitration just keeps getting more passionate (ick), courts at all levels seem to be enforcing […]
by Brian Wolfman The Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) provides jurisdiction in federal district court (originally and by removal) for most minimally diverse class actions and for so-called "mass actions." Under CAFA, a mass action is, as relevant to this post any civil action … in which monetary relief claims of 100 or more persons […]