by Jeff Sovern Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a piece about the CFPB's public database of consumer complaints. This excerpt particularly caught my eye: The agency's approach rankles some in the financial industry who say the publication of complaints leads to an unfair and overly negative view of companies. They fault the CFPB […]
An NPR economic reporter sent an online request for a $500 payday loan to see what happened. So what happened? A barrage of contacts, by phone and email, seeking to lend her all kinds of amounts, as high as ten times the amount she asked for, and at interest rates as high as 1300%. But […]
That is the name of this article by law professor Mark Moller. Here is the abstract: The Supreme Court’s 2011 decision, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, drew heavily on the work of the late Professor Richard Nagareda. In a series of seminal articles, Professor Nagareda urged courts to treat class action procedure as a handmaiden […]
Scott Savage and Donald M. Waldman , both of the University of Colorado at Boulder – Department of Economics, have written The Value of Online Privacy. Here is the abstract: We estimate the value of online privacy with a differentiated products model of the demand for Smartphone apps. We study the apps market because it […]
As this article from late last week explains, a new study of the effects of the 2009 Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act finds that the Act is saving consumers more than $20 billion dollars a year by placing limits on certain credit card company practices that could lead to surprise fees for […]
According to this article by Jenna Greene, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been targetting lawyers in its enforcement suits. Here's an excerpt: The agency has filed more lawsuits against lawyers than almost any other group, according to an analysis by The National Law Journal, bringing six suits against legal services providers. Only the banking […]
We have blogged about the "company Doe" suit a couple times, including here. That's the case in which a company sued to block the inclusion of a product report in the Consumer Product Safety Commission's publicly available, web-accessible database about potentially dangerous products. The district court permitted the company to litigate in secret and under […]
On Friday, we told you about FDA's proposal to authorize generic drug manufacturers to update labels to provide new warnings, just like brand-name manufacturers have been authorized to do since 1982. Janet Woodcock, the head of FDA's drug research and evaluation division, has written an essay in FDA Voice explaining why the agency wants the […]
We've been asked to post the following RFP: Suffolk Law School and the National Consumer Law Center are convening a Research Symposium on Student Loans in Boston on April 10th and 11th. The goal of the Symposium, which is invitation-only, is to bring together the nation’s top experts, including academics, attorneys, industry representatives, consumer advocates, […]
by Jeff Sovern Recently I heard an industry lawyer say that to know what regulators will do next, you should listen to consumer advocates. The only individual consumer advocate he mentioned was Peter Holland. So what is Peter Hollland calling for? He wants debt buyers, when suing a consumer, to disclose the agreement they entered into to […]