Carlie Malone and Paige Marta Skiba, both of Vanderbilt, have written Installment Loans. Here’s the abstract: Installment loans have increasingly replaced traditional payday loans in the short-term, small-dollar credit market. Installment loans, often offered by the same lenders who provide payday loans, have larger principal amounts, longer repayment periods, and lower interest rates relative to payday […]
Carrie Floyd of Michigan has written New Tech, Old Problem: The Rise of Virtual Rent-to-Own Agreements, forthcoming at 65 Boston College Law Review 3 (2024). Here is the abstract: This Article explores how fintech has disrupted the traditional rent-to-own (RTO) industry, giving rise to new, virtual RTO agreements (VirTOs). These VirTOs have enabled the RTO […]
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously yesterday in favor of consumer interests in Department of Agriculture Rural Development Rural Housing Service v. Kirtz, a case argued by Public Citizen Litigation Group attorney Nandan Joshi. The case concerned the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which allows consumers to sue creditors for failing to correct inaccurate credit information that […]
This week marked the end of an extended public comment period for the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed rule to rein in unfair and deceptive fees across the marketplace. Notably, 19 state attorneys general submitted a joint letter of support for the FTC’s proposal. The Commission proposes to address bait-and-switch pricing structures to prevent business from […]
The FCC issued a declaratory ruling that recognizes calls made with AI-generated voices fall under the TCPA’s restrictions on “artificial or prerecorded voice” calls. The declaratory ruling and accompanying statements are available here.
The Guardian reports: “Opioid manufacturers and other major corporations are pushing legislation to strip away state laws that have been used to sue the pharmaceutical industry for hundreds of millions of dollars over the worst drug epidemic in US history. The influential rightwing pressure group the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which is funded by […]
David Berman has written Lending Experimentalism: A New Regulatory Approach to Payday Loans, Forthcoming in the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law Policy, Here is the abstract: Payday loans entangle consumers with few alternatives in catastrophically harmful cycles of borrowing. But because of their design, payday loans are vexingly difficult to regulate effectively. This article explains how […]
Last summer, the San Francisco City Attorney announced he was investigating former magazine U.S. News and World Report over its hospital rankings, noting “Consumers use these rankings to make consequential health care decisions, and yet there is little understanding that the rankings are fraught and that U.S. News has financial relationships with the hospitals it […]
The industry often claims that arbitration is cheaper than litigation for consumers. Well, not so much any more–if that was ever true–after the AAA’s new mass arbitration rules that Adam Pulver reported about on January 29. Adam mentioned the $3,125 initiation fee. In addition, under the new rules, for cases that proceed beyond the initiation […]
E. Gary Spitko of Santa Clara has written Arbitration Secrecy, 108 Cornell Law Review 1729 (2023). Here’s the abstract: Parties to an arbitration contract may agree to a secrecy clause that will govern their arbitration process to protect the confidentiality of their proprietary or personal information. Of great concern, however, they also may use such an […]