In Fourth Circuit filing, Public Citizen challenges sealing in case against CPSC

We've blogged previously about Public Citizen's fight for consumers and against court secrecy in the "Company Doe" case. As you'll recall, this is a case that was litigated before the district court in secret, with secret facts, secret proceedings and a secret plaintiff. A company sued the Consumer Product Safety Commission to keep a complaint […]

Engel & Mccoy on Preemption After Dodd-Frank

Kathleen C. Engel of Suffolk Patricia A. McCoy of Connecticut have written Federal Preemption and Consumer Financial Protection: Past and Future, 3 Banking & Financial Services Policy Report 25 (2012).  Here is the abstract: Many states and cities filled the void by passing anti-predatory lending laws of their own. Lenders, worried about potential liability, quickly organized a […]

More on Consumer Law and Elderly Victims

We posted yesterday on how the law should deal with consumer scams directed at older people in light of evidence that older people are more susceptible to deception. After the post, Ted Mermin, consumer-law expert and head of the Public Good Law Center, pointed out that some states' consumer protection statutes authorize greater penalties against […]

American Banker: Lobbying CFPB on Arbitration Intensifies

Here (login required).  An excerpt: Likewise, there was initially deep skepticism inside the banking industry about the CFPB's arbitration study, and there is still a belief among industry insiders that the agency's research is likely to lead to new regulations. * * * But over the last few months, industry observers have been relatively pleasedwith they […]

Kiva and Microlending

Over at Credit Slips, Alan White has a great post about what he loves about the microlending non-profit, Kiva. He then discusses microlending more generally. Kiva is "a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty." "Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions," Kiva says, it "lets […]

Be Careful Buying a Used Car in the Wake of Hurricane Sandy

Bad floods damage a lot of cars, and then some used car sellers want to sell those damaged cars to unsuspecting customers without disclosing the damage. This happened after Katrina (go, for instance, go here and here). Holly Petreaus, the head of Servicemember Affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has posted this warning about used […]