CL&P Blog: Consumer Law

Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Consumer Law Blogs

OR PHONE (866) 635-1838 for Bankruptcy Help, (866) 635-6190 for Divorce,
(866) 635-2689 for Personal Injury or (866) 635-9402 for Criminal Defense

Find a Local Lawyer

Bankruptcy (866) 635-1838
Divorce (866) 635-6190
Personal Injury (866) 635-2689
Criminal Defense (866) 635-9402

Consumer Law

CL&P Blog

The contributors to this blog are a diverse group of lawyers and law professors who practice, teach, or write about consumer law and policy. Although the blog is hosted by Public Citizen's Consumer Justice Project, the views expressed here are solely those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions with which they are affiliated.

Post Frequency: 15.1/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 11:13:04

Breach of implied warranty of merchantability or fitness may be a tort

Posted on July 03, 2008
In JCW Electronics v. Garza, the Texas Supreme Court consider whether to apply the state?s proportionate responsibility statute to a claim based on a UCC implied warranty. Despite the fact that a prior version of the state expressly included UCC...

Times Articles on Foreclosure Issues, Mortgage Fees, and College Loans

Posted on July 03, 2008
Here are links to a few articles from the Times on consumer law issues from June that I've been stockpiling: From June 22, Bob Tedeschi's Mortgages Column, "A Close Look at All Those Fees," is about how little consumers know...

Florencia Marotta-Wurgler Study of EULAs

Posted on July 02, 2008
Florencia Marotta-Wurgler of NYU has written "'Unfair' Dispute Resolution Clauses: Much Ado About Nothing?" in Boilerplate: Foundations of Market Contracts (Omri Ben-Shahar, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2007), analyzing dispute resolution clauses in end user license agreements...

Times Editorial on the Need for Congressional Action in the Foreclosure Crisis

Posted on July 01, 2008
The Times editorializes here in today's paper about the importance of Congressional action on the foreclosure crisis. Some excerpts: By the time the Senate returns next Monday from its July 4 recess, some 55,000 more homes will have entered foreclosure...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Prima Paint applies to confidentially agreement.

Posted on July 01, 2008
In an interesting case, ITT Educ. Serv. Inc. v. Arce, the 5th Circuit has held that parties to an arbitration may not disclose a copy of the arbitrator?s findings in an independent proceeding involving the same defendant. The Appellants (consumers)...

Oren Bar-Gill & Richard A. Epstein Debate Behavioral Economics vs. Neoclassical Economics in the Context of Consumer Contracts

Posted on June 30, 2008
Oren Bar-Gill of NYU and Richard A. Epstein of Chicago and Stanford's Hoover Institute have each contributed a piece to "Consumer Contracts: Behavioral Economics vs. Neoclassical Economics," 92 Minnesota Law Review (2007-2008). Here's the abstract: In the past decade behavioral...

New Mexico Supreme Court strikes down class-action ban

Posted on June 30, 2008
by Deepak Gupta On Friday, New Mexico's highest court unanimously handed consumers an important victory, holding that, "in the context of small consumer claims that would be prohibitively costly to bring on an individual basis, contractual prohibitions on class relief...

Times Reports that New Housing Bill Will Help Only a Fraction of Borrowers in Distress

Posted on June 29, 2008
Today's Times reports in "As Housing Bill Evolves, Crisis Grows Deeper," that the bill making its way through Congress will help only about 400,000 of the millions of borrowers in distress. Some excerpts: ?It?s not enough, even in the best...

Obama on Consumer Debt

Posted on June 29, 2008
Barack Obama discusses his legislative agenda regarding consumer debt with Michelle Singletary of the Washington Post. Obama notes that until he cashed in on his best-selling books, he and his wife were carrying significant student loan debt. "We were making...

House of Representatives Holds Hearing on Credit Card Marketing to Students

Posted on June 29, 2008
Check out this post over at U.S. PIRG's Consumer Blog discussing the hearing last Thursday held by the House Financial Service Committee's Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit subcommittee regarding marketing of credit cards to college students...

Legendary Plaintiffs' Lawyer Dickie Scruggs Sentenced to Five Years in Prison for Bribing a Judge

Posted on June 29, 2008
The headline of this post gives you the gist. For the sordid details, see this article from the New York Times.

Times Articles on the Tort War, Illinois' Suit Against Countrywide, and Google's Marketing

Posted on June 28, 2008
Recent articles from the Times of interest: Yesterday''s edition contains "Google Tries Tighter Aim for Web Ads" about how Google uses what a consumer searched for a few minutes ago to target ads for that user. Another article, "Post-Spitzer, A...

States going after Countrywide

Posted on June 27, 2008
By Alan White Illinois, California and Washington all filed actions against Countrywide this week alleging a variety of deceptive practices and fair lending violations. The California complaint attacks a variety of origination practices, especially involving negative amortizing mortgages (so-called pay...

Study Finds that Firms That Use Arbitration Clauses in Consumer Contracts Often Do Not Use Such Clauses in Nonconsumer Contracts

Posted on June 26, 2008
In "Arbitration's Summer Soldiers: An Empirical Study of Arbitration Clauses in Consumer and Nonconsumer Contracts," Theodore Eisenberg of Cornell, Geoffrey P. Miller of NYU, and Emily L. Sherwin of Cornell report that firms that use arbitration clauses in consumer contracts...

Mynutritionstore?s not-so-ingenious theory to evade the CDA?s protection for consumer complaint sites

Posted on June 26, 2008
by Paul Alan Levy In a recent series of demands, a purveyor of ?nutraceuticals? called mynutritionstore.com threatened to sue Julia Forte over consumer criticisms appearing on her web site 800notes.com, a forum for identification and discussion of telemarketers based on...

Mortgage Relief Bill Stalls in U.S. Senate

Posted on June 26, 2008
A bill to provide mortgage relief to hundreds of thousands of Americans has stalled in the Senate because Senator John Ensign (R-Nev.) says that he won't allow the bill to go forward until the Senate tacks on tax breaks to...

Mortgage Delinquency Rates Way Up

Posted on June 26, 2008
This morning's Washington Post: "In a sign of continuing trouble in the housing market, mortgage delinquency rates doubled over a 12-month period at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two industry giants reported yesterday." Read the whole story here.

Kurt Eggert Paper: What Prevents Loan Modifications?

Posted on June 25, 2008
Kurt Eggert has written What Prevents Loan Modifications? 18 Housing Policy Debate No. 2. Here's the abstract: This comment describes the barriers to preventive servicing for securitized residential loans and assesses the importance of loan modifications, given the recent increases...

eBay to Offer Consumer Protections

Posted on June 25, 2008
One of the problems of shopping online and paying for items with PayPal is that the consumer does not get the same legal protections as when he or she uses a credit card to directly pay the merchant. According to...

One Reason No One Reads Privacy Policies and How Changing the Incentives Might Make Privacy Policies More Readable

Posted on June 24, 2008
At the Privacy Law Scholars Conference at GWU, hosted jointly by GWU and Berkeley Law Schools, on June 12 and 13, I served as a discussion leader for a session titled "Death to Privacy Policies" about how few people read...

New Study on Elderly Abuse by Banks

Posted on June 20, 2008
Banks charged over $1 billion in overdraft fees to elderly consumers dependent on Social Security for most of their income. This is one of the many findings in a report issued this week by the Center for Responsible Lending, relying...

Bounce loans, the Fed rule and the unbanked

Posted on June 20, 2008
By Alan White The Federal Reserve has proposed a rule to allow consumers to opt out of their bank's discretionary overdraft payment and fee harvesting programs, better known as bounce protection or bounce loans. In the past four or five...

Soaring Mortgage Foreclosure Rate in Washington, D.C. Region Among Highest in Country

Posted on June 19, 2008
This front-page story in today's Washington Post explains that the mortgage foreclosure rate in the Washington, D.C. area has exploded in the last year and is now among the highest in the country. An excerpt: The Washington region now has...

AARP Report: Bankruptcy Filings By Older Americans Have More Than Doubled

Posted on June 18, 2008
The AARP's Public Policy Institute has just released Generations of Struggle, the first research report using data collected from the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project. The authors are Deborah Thorne of Ohio University, Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law School, and Teresa...

Interesting Empirical Work on Consumer Privacy and EULAs

Posted on June 16, 2008
I spent part of last week at the splendid Privacy Law Scholars Conference at GWU, hosted jointly by GWU and Berkeley Law Schools, and organized by Dan Solove and Chris Hoofnagle. One of the great things about the conference is...

How High Can Tuition Go?

Posted on June 14, 2008
Each year, colleges and universities hike tuition, typically by more than the rate of inflation. Competition among schools undoubtedly constrains the hikes to some extent, but are there any other limits? An economist might say that it makes sense to....

May 2008 Safety Recalls

Posted on June 13, 2008
Check out the May 2008 safety recalls for vehicles from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and for other consumer products from the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Elizabeth Warren on Business Week's NAF expose

Posted on June 11, 2008
Over the weekend, Brian posted about Business Week's new must-read investigative report on how the National Arbitration Forum stacks the deck against consumers. Elizabeth Warren has just posted her thoughts on the article over at Talking Points Memo: Whether you...

ACORN Names State Attorneys Generals Doing the Most to Battle the Foreclosure Crisis

Posted on June 11, 2008
by Brian Wolfman The grassroots organization ACORN has just released a report that I think our readers will find interesting. The report looks at the reaction of the attorneys general of the 50 states and D.C. to the current foreclosure...

The Philadelphia Plan

Posted on June 11, 2008
Philadelphia's county court has combined a 3-month moratorium on selected foreclosures with an intensive counseling and mediation program, in order to prevent unnecessary foreclosure sales. Owner-occupants with pending sheriff's sales must first go to free counseling...

Previous | Next

Related Law Bulletins

New Baptist Covenant Blog
Last week, I pointed to the New Baptist Convenant website, now onl...

The Mexico Trucker Blog
I've written before about the perceived problems with relaxed rest...