by Deepak Gupta A divided panel of the Third Circuit today joined the D.C. Circuit in holding that President Obama's recess appointments to the NLRB are unconstitutional. The case is NLRB v. New Visa Nursing and Rehabilitation. From the majority opinion by Judge Smith, who is joined by Judge Van Antwerpen: The central question in […]
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California this week reinstated a $203 million judgment against Wells Fargo for slapping hefty overdraft fees on consumers by manipulating the order in which their charges posted to their accounts in order to maximize the number of transactions that would be subject to overdraft penalties. The […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has launched a Spanish-language website. (To read its English-language homepage go here.)
As the Blog of the Legal Times reported, the FTC sent letters to almost 100 companies letting them know about revisions to the regulations implementing the Childen's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a statute that regulates the collection of information from minors under 13 online. The new rules include an expansion of the types of […]
In the Huffington Post, with Joseph Sanderson.
As this LA Times story explains, In a lawsuit that echoes the worst abuses of the foreclosure crisis, [California's] top law enforcement official is suing the nation's largest bank, accusing it of using aggressive and illegal tactics to collect credit card debt from thousands of California consumers. Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris on Thursday accused […]
[Ed. note: Last week, we featured a guest post on ticket industry abuses, which mentioned a group called "Fan Freedom" and StubHub's support for the group. We now post this response from Ted Mermin.] by Ted Mermin [guest post] Thank you for the guest post on Ticketmaster's anti-competitive practices. Anyone who has tried to get a […]
Raymond H. Brescia and Edward J. Ohanian, both of Albany have written The Politics of Procedure: An Empirical Analysis of Motion Practice in Civil Rights Litigation Under the New Plausibility Standard, forthcoming in 46 Akron Law Review (2013). Here's the abstract: Is civil procedure political? In May of 2009, the Supreme Court issued its decision […]
As this CNN piece explains Credit agencies that rate Wall Street's big banks were blamed for playing a pivotal role in the financial meltdown, but those agencies are still being paid for their work by the very banks they rate. That was one of the root causes of the financial crisis of 2008, according to a […]
by Jeff Sovern We frequently write here about the Fair Credit Reporting Act because of its application to credit reports. But in fact, the FCRA applies to many non-credit transactions. Those transactions typically take one of two forms. In one form someone uses a credit report for something other than a lending decision. For example, […]