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, […]
A little off-point perhaps, but this blog often provides information on Supreme Court advocacy and decisions, and so I thought our readers might be interested in this AP story about the lack of diversity among those who argue before the Supreme Court. Here's a short excerpt: In roughly 75 hours of arguments at the Supreme […]
A victory for a plaintiff! The Supreme Court has decided Dans City v Pelkey opinion, unanimously affirming the no-preemption ruling of the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Here's the begininng of Justice Ginsburg's opinion, which sums things up nicely: This case concerns the preemptive scope of a provision of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 […]
Good news: this morning the Supreme Court denied a debt collector's cert. petition in Convergent Outsourcing v. Zinni, a case Greg reviewed in detail last week here.
by Jeff Sovern Traditional consumer protection rules drew on law and economics models that assumed that consumers were rational and that when consumer markets functioned poorly, all that needed to be done was give rational consumers the ability to protect themselves. For example, the Truth in Lending Act's focus on disclosures presupposes that rational consumers would […]