Claire Johnson Raba of the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law and California, Irvine has written One-Sided Litigation: Lessons from Civil Docket Data in California Debt Collection Lawsuits. Here’s the abstract: A study by Claire Johnson Raba, a researcher with the Debt Collection Lab, shows that debt cases are an increasing burden on consumers and […]
Ever since the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held last year in Community Financial Services Association (CFSA) v. CFPB that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding structure violates the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause and the Supreme Court agreed to review the decision, the CFPB’s ability to complete its work has been stalled. In just the last […]
Last month, the FTC updated its Endorsements Guide. The Guide’s definition of clear and conspicuous is particularly interesting. The Guide states: (f) For purposes of this part, “clear and conspicuous” means that a disclosure is difficult to miss ( i.e., easily noticeable) and easily understandable by ordinary consumers. * * * In any communication using […]
Regular readers of the blog will recall that after the CFPB announced that it interpreted its power to proscribe unfair practices as reaching discriminatory conduct, the Chamber of Commerce and various banking trade organizations sued the Bureau in the Eastern District of Texas (it’s always Texas) challenging the Bureau’s determination. Both sides later moved for […]
This week, I received three different emails informing me that companies I interact with had updated their terms and conditions. The ordinary consumer likely deleted these emails, or read them without understanding what they were talking about, but I knew right away that the biggest change was likely about arbitration. And I was right. All […]
NBC has a report here. This time, the accounts are not on behalf of existing account holders but seem to involve synthetic identity fraud.
I am thrilled to report that I have been named the Michael Millemann Professor of Consumer Protection Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. Michael Millemann is a long time Maryland faculty member who has been a leader in many areas of the law, including consumer law, and it’s an […]
Maria Glover of Georgetown has written Recent Developments in Mandatory Arbitration Warfare: Winners and Losers (So Far) in Mass Arbitration, 100 Washington University Law Review (2023). Here’s the abstract: Mass arbitration has sent shock waves through the civil justice system and unnerved the defense bar. To see how quickly and dramatically this phenomenon has entered […]
When I first saw the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Elster v. Vidal, won by my friends and former colleagues Jon Taylor and Greg Beck, holding that the First Amendment forbade the United States Patent and Trademark Office from withholding registration of the proposed trademark “Trump Too […]
On Wednesday, I blogged about Roseanna Sommers’ important new arbitration study. One point I want to highlight about the study is that it makes clear that consumers don’t understand arbitration opt-outs at all. First, some background: some companies insert in their arbitration clauses a provision that allows consumers to opt out of arbitration if they […]