SCOTUS: “disputes are subject to arbitration if, and only if, the parties actually agreed to arbitrate those disputes.”

From today’s decision in Coinbase, Inc. v. Suski. Longtime readers will recall the empirical evidence that consumers do not understand arbitration clauses and so, in my view, they have not “actually agreed” to arbitration clauses.

For law professors: want to be on a list of consumer law profs for reporters to call?

I often get emails from reporters seeking comment on a consumer law matter. When I can, I answer their questions, but frequently they want someone who knows about an aspect of consumer law I don’t know that much about. In such cases, I refer them to someone else when I know of a better choice […]

NCLC’s Lauren Saunders on payday lenders’ vow to continue battling the CFPB rule: “It’s a sign of how fundamentally predatory your business model is, that after they’ve made unaffordable loans and put people into a debt trap, they can’t even comply with a rule that merely prevents them from continuing to hit people’s accounts.”

That quote appears in an article by Polo Rocha in the American Banker headlined After loss at Supreme Court, payday lenders vow to keep fighting CFPB (behind paywall but available on Lexis). As the article explains “The CFPB rule, which has never taken effect, would prohibit payday lenders from making another attempt after a payment fails […]

Report describes problems with credit-card rewards programs

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau analyzed several hundred consumer complaints relating to the administration of credit card rewards programs and identified four recurring themes that resulted in consumers not receiving the rewards they were promised: (1) unexpected promotional conditions, (2) devaluation, (3) redemption problems, and (4) revocation. The report is here.

9th Cir. grants en banc review to consider personal jurisdiction over online businesses

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last week granted en banc review in a case called Briskin v. Shopify, to consider whether a state may exercise specific personal jurisdiction over a defendant that unlawfully uses its nationally accessible web platform to extract data from in-state consumers. As reporter Alison Frankel of Reuters wrote, “The court’s […]

For consumer law professors who haven’t already taken the Who Teaches Consumer Law survey

Regular readers of the blog will recall seeing a draft of my survey questions for consumer law professors. Attendees at the Teaching Consumer Law conference answered the final survey questions, but I would also love to receive responses from those who could not attend the conference and who have either taught consumer law or hope […]

Supreme Court upholds CFPB funding

The U.S. Supreme Court today, in a 7-2 decision, ruled in favor of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, rejecting a challenge brought by payday lenders to Congress’s decision about how to fund the agency. The case came to the Court after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ unprecedented ruling that funding for the Bureau’s violates […]

Congress passes FAA reauthorization bill with consumer protection provisions

After several delays, the House today passed a five-year reauthorization bill for the FAA, which had previously passed the Senate. The bipartisan bill includes a number of consumer protection provisions, including provisions related to: refunds for cancellations and significant delays seating for travel with children and passengers with disabilities access to customer service agents The […]

Eleventh Circuit Vacates GoDaddy TCPA Settlement

The parties in consolidated class actions against GoDaddy brought under the TCPA negotiated a settlement, under which Go Daddy would provide up to $35 million to pay both class members’ claims and up to $10.5 million to their lawyers as attorney’s fees. The district court certified a settlement class. The day Rule 23(c)(2) notices were […]

Divided Second Circuit Holds Texts to Pre-Existing List of Numbers Not Covered by TCPA

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) regulates unsolicited calls using “any automatic telephone dialing system [(ATDS)] or an artificial or prerecorded voice.”  The statute defines an automatic telephone dialing system as “equipment which has the capacity…to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator; and…to dial such numbers.” […]