Today's Blog of the Legal Times has this interesting post about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's use of investigatory demands on potential enforcement targets in the financial services industry.
As explained in this LA Times story, "[m]ore than 3.5 million Discover credit card customers will share $200 million in refunds in the wake of a federal investigation [by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the FDIC] that determined the bank tricked people into signing up for payment protection plans and other add-on services." The […]
Adi Osovsky, a Harvard SJD candidate, has written The Misconception of the Consumer as a Homo Economicus: A Behavioral Economic Approach to Consumer Protection in the Credit Reporting System, forthcoming in the Suffolk University Law Review. Here's the abstract: The significant increase in the number of consumer transactions, along with the expansion of information technology, […]
In July, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Kilgore v. Key Bank that, in light of AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, California law holding that claims for public injunctive relief are not subject to mandatory arbitration is preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act. The court held that the California rule does not survive Concepcion […]
In this Wall St. Journal op-ed, Congressman Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) says that the Consumer Financial Services Bureau is not transparent about how it plans to spend its money. He also says that the CFPB pays its employees too much money: A review of the bureau's salaries as of Aug. 28, 2012, reveals that approximately 60% […]
We explained here that after the Supreme Court threw out the nationwide employment discrimination class action against Wal-Mart on behalf of hundreds of thousands of women, the class lawyers pushed ahead with smaller class actions and in helping women process individual claims against Wal-Mart. And now, district judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco has rebuffed […]
Read this extensive post at Naked Capitalism entitled "'The Drugs Don't Work': How the Medical-Industrial Complex Systematically Suppresses Negativess Studies." Here's a very brief excerpt: [Although] the overt corruption of science at work in the drug arena … comes to light from time to time, often in the context of litigation, the lay public is […]
Amitai Etzioni has written The Privacy Merchants: What is to Be Done? Here is the abstract: Rights have been long understood, first and foremost, as protection of the private from the public, the individual from the State. True, we also recognize positive rights (such as socioeconomic rights) and the government’s duty to protect citizens from violations […]
Continuing what seems to have become a trendy move for Republican attorneys-general, the states of Michigan, Oklahoma, and South Carolina are joining a legal challenge to another signature Obama law. Here's a helpful summary from the Blog of Legal Times: Three states have joined a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Dodd-Frank Act, complaining that […]
Here. The headline: A Sense of Déjà Vu in Latest Hill Appearance of CFPB Chief. An excerpt: First came the obligatory complaint that Cordray's January recess appointment was illegal. "Dodd Frank made you a very powerful appointee, but not a legitimate appointee," Representative Jeb Hensarling (R–Texas) told the perpetually unflappable Cordray. "There's a big gray […]