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

HAMP Update

Posted on March 08, 2011
ProPublica has posted a lengthy and detailed report on the Home Affordable Modification Program. They also provide homeowner complaint statistics obtained from Treasury, which confirm the poor performance of the banks servicing most mortgages. Through last November, there were almost...

Freeman Paper on Race and Credit Card Debt

Posted on March 08, 2011
Andrea Freeman of California Western has written Credit Card Ills: Reducing Racial Disparities in Debt. Here's the abstract: Credit card debt, particularly in conjunction with the subprime lending crisis and severe economic recession, jeopardizes the ability of many African American...

Grimmelmann Paper on Hoofnagle and Moringiello on ID Theft & Data Security

Posted on March 07, 2011
James Grimmelmann of New York Law School has written Known and Unknown, Property and Contract: Comments on Hoofnagle and Moringiello, 5 Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial, and Commercial Law 85 (2011). Here's the abstract: In addition to gerund-noun-noun titles and...

Usha Rajagopal?s traveling SLAPP suit shows need for a federal anti-SLAPP statute

Posted on March 07, 2011
by Paul Alan Levy Usha Rajagopal, a San Francisco cosmetic surgeon, has tried to use cosmetic surgery of a legal sort to improve the appearance of her online reviews. She is under discipline by the California Medical Board because of...

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

HuffPo Reports How Lenders Try to Restrain CFPB Without Seeming To

Posted on March 06, 2011
Here. Basically, organizations that include lenders as members but whose names suggest a different membership (e.g., the International Franchise Association and the Manufactured Housing Institute) urge restraint.

Incompetence and Worse in the Mortgage Servicing Industry

Posted on March 06, 2011
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post tells this story of incompetence and possible fraud in the mortgage servicing industry. Milbank and his wife were victimized by a series of errors that, to be charitable, were caused by "mistakes," nearly all...

Viscusi Paper: Does Product Liability Make Us Safer?

Posted on March 05, 2011
W. Kip Viscusi of Vanderbilt and the National Bureau of Economic Research has written Does Product Liability Make Us Safer? Here's the abstract: Although a fundamental objective of tort liability is to promote safety, the performance of product liability has...

Obama Administration, State AGs, and Banks May Be on Brink of Deal Concerning Sloppy and Fraudulent Foreclosures

Posted on March 04, 2011
We have blogged before on revelations that many mortgage foreclosures resulting from the recent financial crisis were not supported by adequate documentation. You'll recall that some banks temporarily halted their foreclosures and state attorneys general took action to try to...

Civil Disobedience, Consumer Protection, and Global Warming

Posted on March 04, 2011
Jamie Pleune, a Salt Lake City lawyer and activist, has published this op-ed on the topic.

Arbitration agreement signed as a condition of employment requiring waiver of the option of an administrative hearing is unconscionable.

Posted on March 02, 2011
The California Supreme Court, by a vote of 5-4, held an arbitration clause that precluded employee resort to administrative remedies was unconscionable. In Sonic-Calabasas v. Moreno, the court struck down the provision precluding resort to an administrative hearing, but held...

A Comment on the Chamber of Commerce's CFPB Letter

Posted on March 02, 2011
by Jeff Sovern Yesterday the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, along with some other organizations, released a letter setting forth "???????priority recommendations" for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Chamber calls forthe Bureau to defer rule-making until after a director is...

Joint Corporate-Republican Effort to Kill Consumer Product Safety Database in Full Swing

Posted on February 28, 2011
The Washington Post reports this morning that House Republicans are attempting to kill the new, publicly-available Consumer Product Safety Commission product safety database by cutting off its funding. The Post explains that As part of the spending bill that passed...

Are the Better Business Bureau's "A" Ratings a fraud?

Posted on February 27, 2011
by Paul Alan Levy David Segal's "Haggler" column today raises serious questions about whether the Better Business Bureau gives its own members an easy pass, in return for little more than a check.

UDAP Statutes Used Against Books

Posted on February 27, 2011
by Jeff Sovern Kevin Jon Heller of the Opinio Juris blog has a post about the troublesome practice of using UDAP statutes against book authors and publishers in connection with the content of their books. Heller writes about the suit...

NCLC Launches New Working Cars for Working Families Website

Posted on February 27, 2011
The National Consumer Law Center has launched this new website called "Working Cars for Working Families." Here's how NCLC explains it: A safe and reliable car is essential to the success of most working families. Child care, jobs, groceries, medical...

Civil Disobedience, Consumer Protection, and Global Warming

Posted on February 27, 2011
Jamie Pleune, a Salt Lake City lawyer and activist, has published this op-ed on the topic.

Should the Judicial Ethics Code Apply to Supreme Court Justices Like It Does To Other Federal Judges

Posted on February 25, 2011
The Washington Post explains here that 100 law professors have asked Congress to subject Supreme Court justices to a judicial ethics code like the one that all other federal judges apply to themselves. One concern is the recent attendance of...

Jim Hawkins Paper on the CFPB and Regulation of Fringe Credit Products

Posted on February 25, 2011
Jim Hawkins of Houston has written The Federal Government in the Fringe Economy, 14 Chapman Law Review (2011). Here's the abstract: This paper is a contribution to Chapman Law Review?s symposium, From Wall Street to Main Street: The Future of...

U.S. Government and Big Tobacco in Fight Over Corrective Advertising

Posted on February 24, 2011
For years, the tobacco companies lied about tobacco. They said it wasn't harmful or that the evidence of its health effects wasn't conclusive, when they knew it caused cancer and a range of other diseases. They said that tobacco wasn't...

The Death of Refund Anticipation Loans?

Posted on February 23, 2011
Refund Anticipation Loans (RALs) are very short-term, high-interest loans provided to people in anticipation of their tax refunds. The interest rates on these loans, if expressed as annual percentage rates, can be 500% or more. The RAL industry depends on...

Important New Treasury Rule Protects Social Security, Other Federal Benefits in Bank Accounts

Posted on February 23, 2011
by Jon Sheldon An extremely important federal rule issued today (76 Fed. Reg. 9939) strengthens protections for Social Security and other federal benefits deposited in consumers' bank accounts. The ?interim final? rule, which will take effect on May 1 but...

Supreme Court Rejects Preemption Defense, 8-0, in Product Defects Case

Posted on February 23, 2011
Good news today from the U.S. Supreme Court. In a decision issued this morning in Williamson v. Mazda, the Court unanimously held that state-law damages claims seeking to hold an automaker accountable for its vehicle-design choices were not barred by...

District Court for the District of Columbia Rejects Challenge to Health Care Law's Insurance Mandate

Posted on February 23, 2011
In this 64-page opinion issued yesterday, Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has upheld the insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act against a constitutional challenge. I believe that makes the district court...

Florida Court Reverses Injunction Against Ripoff Report

Posted on February 22, 2011
by Paul Alan Levy Late last year, I discussed a Florida trial court ruling holding that although section 230 forbade a lawsuit directly against XCentric Ventures, the operator of Ripoff Report, for allowing a user to post statements about the...

16th Annual Consumer Financial Services Institute

Posted on February 21, 2011
by Deepak Gupta Next week, I'll be speaking on two panels at the Practicing Law Institute's 16th Annual Consumer Financial Services Institute in New York (February 28-March 1) and, a month later, in Chicago (March 31-April 1). The sessions will...

Interesting CAFA Decision

Posted on February 21, 2011
When are actions by state attorneys general brought on behalf of their citizens "class actions" or "mass actions" and thus removable to federal court under the Class Action Fairness Act? Judge Illson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern...

New Empirical Studies on Arbitration

Posted on February 21, 2011
by Deepak Gupta Alexander J. S. Colvin of Cornell has just published an interesting and timely new article, An Empirical Study of Employment Arbitration: Case Outcomes and Processes, in the current issue of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. The...

Last-Minute Industry Effort to Derail Consumer Product Safety Commission Consumer Complaint Database

Posted on February 21, 2011
We told you last month that, in March, the Consumer Product Safety Commission will launch a web-based public database containing consumer complaints about products, and we noted that businesses were working behind the scenes to ditch the program. Now, the...

Will the CFPB Budget Be Cut?

Posted on February 18, 2011
Remember last year when Congress enacted Dodd-Frank and provided that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would not be subject to annual appropriations, but would instead be able to claim a portion of the Fed's budget, thus apparently insulating it from...

Google pushes the panic button on unsealing?

Posted on February 17, 2011
I have discussed here the significant issues of public access to judicial records raised by our motion for unsealing of the Joint Appendix in Rosetta Stone's appeal of the decision upholding Google's policies on keyword advertising. After we filed our...

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...