According to its sponsors — dozens of consumer groups and government agencies — "National Consumer Protection Week (NCPW) is a coordinated campaign that encourages consumers nationwide to take full advantage of their consumer rights and make better-informed decisions. NCPW 2013 will take place March 3 through March 9, 2013." Go to this comprehensive website for […]
Ginger Chouinard of New Mexico has written The 'Other' Credit Report: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You. Here's the abstract: Nearly 90% of financial institutions use ChexSystems or similar account screening reports in their account opening process, yet they are under no duty to disclose this to consumers until an account is denied due […]
Maybe this is slightly off-topic here, but I have an opinion piece up at The Huffington Post reacting to Attorney General Eric Holder's bombshell too-big-to-jail comments yesterday. If you haven't heard, Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee that some banks may be too big to prosecute, and Congress should consider doing something about it. In case you missed it, […]
by Brian Wolfman Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, consumers are entitled to annual free credit reports from the three mega-credit reporting companies — Experian, Trans Union, and Equifax. That's good because it gives consumers a chance to see their reports and try to get them corrected when they are wrong. (And they are often […]
Nancy Welsh of Penn State has written Mandatory Predispute Consumer Arbitration, Structural Bias, and Incentivizing Procedural Safeguards, 42 Southwestern University Law Review 187 (2012). She presented the paper at the AALS annual conference. Here's the abstract: Within the past several decades, there has been an explosion in the creation, institutionalization and use of “alternative” dispute […]
We have posted repeatedly on increasing income and wealth inequality in the United States (for instance, go here, here, and here). It turns out that not only is wealth inequality increasing, but Americans believe that wealth inequality is a lot less pronounced than it actually is. Watch this powerful presentation here or by cllcking on […]
by Paul Alan Levy A status conference was held today in connection with Maged Moughni’s motion to vacate the impermissible prior restraint that Judge Kathleen McDonald issued a month ago, forbidding Moughni to discuss in public the class action lawsuit brought against McDonald’s for selling haram Chicken McNuggets that had been advertised as halal, or […]
That's the name of this article by Thomas Stipanowich and J. Ryan Lamare. Here's the abstract (with my italics added on the reference to consumer and products-liability arbitration): As attorneys for the world’s most visible clients, corporate counsel played a key role in the transformation of American conflict resolution in the late Twentieth Century. In […]
That's the title of this new report about car-title loans authored by the Center for Responsible Lending and the Consumer Federation of America. Car-title loans are small loans secured by the title to the borrower's car. According to the report, each year, consumers pay $3.6 billion in interest on these loans for only $1.6 billion […]
The Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue ("TACD") a coalition of consumer organizations in both Europe and North America, has fired a shot across the bow of both the Obama Administration and the leadership of the EU, warning that "improving trade" through the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership ("TTIP") should not be a smokescreen for watering down […]