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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

A Lowest Common Denominator Approach to Insurance Regulation?

Posted on May 28, 2008
Check out this interesting and scary post by Elizabeth Warren over at Credit Slips. Here are two key paragraphs to whet your appetite: The effective repeal of usury laws in the US was accomplished in the quietest possible way: In...

Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Plaintiffs in Two Key Employment Discrimination Cases

Posted on May 28, 2008
Although a bit off this blog's beaten path, I thought readers might want access here to the Supreme Court's important decisions issued yesterday in CBOCS West, Inc. v. Humphries, No. 06-1431, and Gomez-Perez v. Potter, No. 06-1321. CBOCS held by...

Consumer Banktruptcies Soar Despite Restrictions Enacted by Congress in 2005

Posted on May 28, 2008
Check out this front page article in today's Washington Post discussing the significant increase in consumer bankruptcies, despite Congress's enactment in 2005 of legislation intended to tighten eligibility for bankruptcy. As the article puts it: "Despite the 2005 passage of...

Consumer advocate fights off trademark arbitration claim

Posted on May 27, 2008
by Greg Beck Robert Arkow runs a website at the domain names metrolinkrider.com and metrolinksucks.com (no longer active) where riders and employees of Metrolink, the Southern California commuter rail system, share their gripes about services and fares...

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Settlement opens access to multiple listings service

Posted on May 27, 2008
For years, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) blocked access to its multiple listing service, preventing online real estate agents from access to home listings. No longer. The Department of Justice's Antitrust Division settled today a 2005 lawsuit claiming that...

Why the NAF Wants Courts to Lower the Burden of Proof on Debt Collectors

Posted on May 27, 2008
by Paul Bland Several of the principals of the for-profit National Arbitration Forum, a Minnesota-based company that aggressively advertises offers a more corporate-friendly system of private judging than other private arbitration firms, have been writing and publishing articles arguing in...

Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Class-Action Ban Issue

Posted on May 27, 2008
by Deepak Gupta A cutting-edge issue in the world of consumer law--and one that this blog has discussed many times before (see, e.g., here, here, and here)--is the extent to which corporations can enforce class-action bans placed in consumer adhesion...

Survey on Content of Consumer Law Classes

Posted on May 27, 2008
Last Friday, at Richard Alderman's excellent Teaching Consumer Law Conference, under the auspices of the University of Houston Law Center--the conference where, two years ago, this Blog was born--I distributed a survey inquiring about what topics professors teach in their...

Customer Disservice

Posted on May 26, 2008
Sick of having to push 10 phone buttons to get to the customer service representative -- you know, the person who can't really help you anyway? Check out this article from Saturday's New York Times about the decline in customer...

Countrywide weary of homeowner pleas for help

Posted on May 25, 2008
Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide, inadvertently replied to a homeowner's email requesting foreclosure prevention help by saying he found these requests disgusting and unbelievable (because the homeowner used a template from a website to write his hardship letter...

50% for Housing?

Posted on May 24, 2008
By Alan M. White One question posed in the Federal Reserve's pending mortgage regulation is what percentage of income Americans should devote to housing. The question isn't posed in quite those terms, but those are the terms in which I...

Checkmate

Posted on May 23, 2008
Checkmate is a new web video about the realities of check cashing stores and banks in poor neighborhoods. [HT Consumerist]

A court gets one right, holds truthful use of a competitor's trademarks is not infringement

Posted on May 22, 2008
by Greg Beck Trademark law was designed to protect consumers from being fooled by products that are passed off as something they are not. Too often, however, it is invoked by companies not to protect consumers, but to interfere with...

Foreclosure Crisis Update

Posted on May 22, 2008
By Alan M. White Six months ago I reported that mortgage servicers were much more likely to foreclose than to offer loan modifications, based on data from monthly remittance reports to investors. Since then far more data have become available,...

Public Citizen wins against anti-consumer copyright claim

Posted on May 22, 2008
by Greg Beck Cross-posted from Citizen Vox When Seattle resident Tim Vernor put a used copy of software for sale on eBay, the software's maker, Autodesk, demanded that eBay cancel the listing. Although Vernor was selling an authentic, original copy...

New Poll: Americans Say "No Thanks" To Binding Arbitration

Posted on May 21, 2008
A new national opinion poll shows widespread disapproval of binding arbitration provisions in consumer contracts and overwhelming support for the Arbitration Fairness Act now pending in Congress. By five to three, Americans said they disapprove rather than approve of consumer...

Senate Negotiators and Banking Committee Agree on Aid for Those Facing Foreclosure

Posted on May 20, 2008
Today's Times has an article headlined "Senate Leaders Reach Deal on Housing Assistance." Here's an excerpt: Senate negotiators on Monday said they had reached a deal on legislation aimed at helping hundreds of thousands of homeowners in danger of foreclosure...

Booming Business in Boat Repos

Posted on May 20, 2008
The New York Times is reporting a rising tide (note the ironic pun) in boat repossessions. --Just one more example of the America's problematic debt culture. Here's the lead: So many people have so many things they can no longer...

New CAFA Decision From Second Circuit

Posted on May 20, 2008
by Brian Wolfman In Estate of Pew v. Cardarelli, No. 06-5703-mv (May 13, 2008), the Second Circuit resolved a couple issues under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), which greatly expanded federal diversity jurisdiction over class actions. In Pew, an...

FTC Workshop on Consumer Information and the Mortgage Market

Posted on May 19, 2008
On May 29, the FTC will host what sounds like an important conference on the role of consumer information in the mortgage marketplace. Here's an excerpt from the FTC's announcement: * * * The purpose of this conference is to...

Update on Adam Levitin Paper

Posted on May 19, 2008
On Friday, we blogged about Adam Levitin's paper here. Professor Levitin has posted to SSRN a significantly revised version of the piece, titled "A Critique of the American Bankers Association's Study on Credit Card Regulation."

Adam Levitin Responds to ABA Study on Regulation of Credit Cards

Posted on May 16, 2008
Adam Levitin of Georgetown has written "All But Accurate: A Critique of the American Bankers Association's Study on Credit Card Regulation." Here's the abstract: This review article takes issue with three of the main assertions of the American Bankers Association's...

Hoofnagle and King on What Californians Understand About Privacy Offline

Posted on May 15, 2008
Chris Jay Hoofnagle, who has made important contributions on identity theft, has teamed with Jennifer King, both of Berkeley, to produce "Research Report: What Californians Understand About Privacy Offline." The Report raises disturbing questions about the extent to which consumers...

Reckless lenders

Posted on May 15, 2008
Today's New York Times reports on a court ruling (Order and Opinion here) allowing a shareholder suit against Countrywide to proceed. The court cited specific allegations in the complaint that company directors ignored numerous red flags alerting them to widespread...

U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Holds Hearing on Federal Preemption of State Tort Claims Involving Drugs and Medical Devices

Posted on May 14, 2008
The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing today entitled ?Should FDA Drug and Medical Device Regulation Bar State Liability Claims?? The Committee described the hearing as follows: FDA approval of drugs...

Melissa Jacoby on Mortgage Delinquency Management

Posted on May 14, 2008
Melissa B. Jacoby of North Carolina has written "Home Ownership Risk Beyond a Subprime Crisis: The Role of Delinquency Management," 76 Fordham L. Rev. (2008). Here's the abstract: Public investment in and promotion of homeownership and the home mortgage market...

Times Pieces on Foreclosure Crisis, Predatory Lending, and Wachovia Telemarketing Case

Posted on May 13, 2008
Yesterday the Times published an editorial on the Bush administration response to the foreclosure crisis, with the noteworthy headline, "Saying No to Everything." An excerpt: Even before the House passed a new plan last week to prevent foreclosures, President Bush...

Credit Card Profits Safe, for Now

Posted on May 13, 2008
Fitch Ratings, the people who were so wrong about subprime mortgages, remain guardedly optimistic about credit card profits, and the performance of securitized credit card receivables, expecting credit card yield spread to remain ?robust.? Prime credit card issuers are paying...

U.S. District Court Holds That Rape and Assault Claims Against Haliburton Are Not Subject to Arbitration, but Court Case Stayed While Other Claims Are Arbitrated

Posted on May 13, 2008
by Brian Wolfman Last December, we blogged here about Haliburton's efforts to force into arbitration a suit brought by a former employee who maintains that she was gang-raped by her Haliburton co-workers in Baghdad. The plaintiff also filed a Title...

Deborah Thorne and Katherine Porter Paper on Financial Education for Bankrupt Families

Posted on May 12, 2008
Deborah Thorne of Ohio University's Department of Sociology and Katherine Porter of Iowa have co-authored Financial Education for Bankrupt Families: Attitudes and Needs, 24 Journal of Consumer Education 15 (2007). Here's the abstract: This paper examines bankrupt families' attitudes toward,...

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