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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

Credit Crisis Amnesia - Student Loan Version

Posted on February 17, 2011
In the early 1990s, Republicans and Democrats joined forces to crack down on federal loan backing for abusive for-profit trade schools, who were largely responsible for rapidly escalating student loan defaults in the 80s. The 1992 Higher Education Act amendments...

Historian Stanley Kutler on the Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act's Insurance Mandate

Posted on February 17, 2011
We have covered the Affordable Care Act in some depth and have posted material on the debate over the constitutionality of its insurance mandate --for instance, here and here. As you know, the constitutionality of the mandate (which, unless struck...

Javelin Marketing Seeks to Suppress Criticism of Its "Insurance Leads" Sales

Posted on February 16, 2011
by Paul Alan Levy A company called ?Javelin Marketing,? which in turn operates a business called ?Prospect Match? that generates and sells insurance leads, recently tried to suppress criticism of its business practices on several pages of Insurance Forums web...

Times Articles on APR and Libel Claims for Critical Reviews

Posted on February 15, 2011
The Sunday Times had two interesting pieces on consumer law issues. One was about problems with using the APR to determine which of two mortgages is cheaper: because the APR omits some credit costs and assumes that the borrower will...

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Debt Buyer Dismissed

Posted on February 15, 2011
A Pennsylvania appeals court has affirmed the dismissal of a debt buyer lawsuit on an old credit card account, because the debt buyer could not prove the debt. The credit card agreement and account history could not be admitted under...

Foreclosure crisis in Pictures

Posted on February 14, 2011
Here is a compelling photojournalist essay on the foreclosure crisis in Florida, including the faces of homeowners, tenants, and lawyers swept up in the tidal wave.

Stipanowich Paper on the Struggle to Shape American Arbitration

Posted on February 11, 2011
Thomas Stipanowich of Pepperdine has written Revelation and Reaction: The Struggle to Shape American Arbitration in CONTEMPORARY ISSUES INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION AND MEDIATION: THE FORDHAM PAPERS 2010, Martin Nijhoff, 2011. Here's the abstract: In this article, Professor Stipanowich explores recent decisions...

WSJ Article on CFPB Enforcement Chief Richard Corday

Posted on February 10, 2011
Here. A subscription is required to read more than the first two paragraphs. Here's a brief excerpt, which may whet your appetite enough to obtain that subscription: Asked in the interview how soon the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would start...

Government Says that Toyotas Don't Have Sudden-Acceleration Problems; Consumer Advocates and Plaintiffs' Lawyers Disagree

Posted on February 10, 2011
Yesterday's Washington Post reported that the widely discussed Toyota sudden-acceleration problem does not exist. As the Post put it: Government investigators have rejected claims that electronic defects caused Toyota cars and trucks to accelerate out of control, a finding released...

Should TV Drug Ads Focus on Treatment of Illness Instead of Selling Specific Products?

Posted on February 10, 2011
In this NY Times op-ed Ian Spatz says that drug companies TV ads for specific products should be replaced with ads jointly crafted by industry competitors discussing treatment options for certain medical conditions, and he thinks Congress should pass an...

CFPB Working on TILA/RESPA Disclosure Forms

Posted on February 08, 2011

For Banks, Bigger is not Better

Posted on February 07, 2011
A new Moody's report finds that for all mortgage modifications since the crisis began, the redefault rate is nearly 50%. On the other hand, they also find that homeowners with more recent modifications, and modifications that actually provide payment relief,...

More on the CFPB's Agenda

Posted on February 07, 2011
by Jeff Sovern The National Law Journal has an interesting article on the response of lawyers representing businesses to the CFPB, headlined "Agenda Unknown" (I can't post a link because it requires a subscription). As the headline implies, the basic...

Red-Light Cameras: A Regulatory Success Story?

Posted on February 06, 2011
Three of the four members of my family have gotten tickets for running just-turned-red lights at intersections with red-light cameras. In each case, the cameras were accurate. In each case, we were pissed when the ticket arrived in the mail....

The Health Care Debate: Yes, Congress Can Make You Buy Vegetables!

Posted on February 04, 2011
Some folks claiming that Congress's passage of the health insurance mandate in the Affordable Care Act exceeded Congress's Commerce Clause powers have argued that if Congress can make you buy insurance (or pay a tax or fine) as part of...

Harkness Paper on the Credit CARD Act and Seniors

Posted on February 04, 2011
Donna S. Harkness of Memphis has written The Credit Card Act of 2009: Welcome Relief or Too Little, Too Late for Vulnerable Seniors? 29 Banking and Financial Services Policy Report, No. 9, at 12. Here's the abstract: As a group,...

HAMP Paperwork Blizzard

Posted on February 03, 2011
Those of us in the upper Midwest have blizzards on the brain. On Monday the Treasury Department released its loan-level data files on the more than 2.5 million mortgage borrowers who have sought help from the Home Affordable Modification program....

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau launches website and social networking presence

Posted on February 03, 2011
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has launched its spiffy new website -- located at http://www.consumerfinance.gov/ and already equipped to receive suggestions and consumer complaints. The site's design immediately sends the message that the CFPB, as the first major federal agency...

Lessons from the Texas Downloading Dismissal - Why Due Process Matters

Posted on February 02, 2011
by Paul Alan Levy Apparently out of the blue, a copyright lawsuit filed in federal court in Dallas by a German pornographer against 670 anonymous Internet users who were charged with infringing the copyright in the film by making it...

Another Federal District Court Holds That Congress Lacked Authority to Pass the Health Care Mandate

Posted on February 01, 2011
Read about it here and here. The 78-page opinion is the second federal district court ruling finding that Congress lacked constitutional authority to pass the Affordable Care Act's insurance mandate. Unlike the first ruling from Virginia, yesterday's decision, issued by...

Kwikset v. Superior Court: Victory, Made in California

Posted on January 31, 2011
by Ted Mermin In a closely watched case, the California Supreme Court on Thursday issued a decision preserving the broad availability of the state?s principal consumer protection laws in cases involving mislabeled goods. The question at issue in Kwikset v...

Paper on the Relationship Between Payday Loan Size and Default Probability

Posted on January 30, 2011
Will Dobbie of Harvard and Paige Marta Skiba of Vanderbilt have written Information Asymmetries in Consumer Lending: Evidence from Two Payday Lending Firms. Here's the abstract: This paper tests for incentive and selection effects in a subprime consumer credit market...

Bank Walkaways

Posted on January 27, 2011
The Woodstock Institute in Chicago has issued a report carefully documenting the ownership status of the vacant properties in Chicago. About 15% are bank-owned homes after foreclosure, and another 10% are apparent walkaways, cases where a foreclosure was initiated but...

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Attributes Crisis in Part to Consumer Protection Failures

Posted on January 27, 2011
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report is now available. I haven't had time to read it completely, but based on a quick look it seems to attribute the crisis in part to failures of consumer protection. For example, here's a...

New Adjustable-Mortgage Disclosures To Go Into Effect Sunday

Posted on January 26, 2011
The new Interim Rules implement the Mortgage Disclosure Improvement Act and require disclosure of the maximum monthly the borrower may have to make in the first five years of the loan as well as during the life of the loan....

Paper on the Role of Securitization in Mortgage Renegotiation

Posted on January 25, 2011
Sumit Agarwal and Gene Amromin of the Fed, Itzhak Ben-David of the Ohio State University - Finance Department, Fisher College of Business, Souphala Chomsisengphet of the OCC, and Douglas D. Evanoff, also of the Fed, have written The Role of...

President Obama, Batman, and The Role of the Consumer Attorney

Posted on January 25, 2011
by Steve Berk President Obama recently announced a government-wide review of federal regulations. The project?s aim is two-fold: Cut back on redundant, undue, over expensive regulation; and Ensure that dangerous products are kept off of consumer shelves by redoubling efforts...

Does Comcast's Takeover of NBC Harm Consumers?

Posted on January 22, 2011
Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times says that "[w]ith his proposed conditions on the deal, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is trying to sugarcoat a terrible regulatory decision that underscores the derelict condition of government regulation in our age." Read the...

Times Editorial: Debit Card Predators

Posted on January 21, 2011
Here. They argue that instead of the Fed's opt-in rules, under which the Times claims banks have used deceptive practices to persuade consumers to opt in, the Fed (or CFPB, when it takes over) should adopt the FDIC rules obliging...

More on the HHS Report on Pre-Existing Conditions

Posted on January 19, 2011
Yesterday, we blogged about the soon-to-released report of the Department of Health and Human Services estimating that up to 129 million non-elderly Americans suffer from pre-existing conditions as defined under the Affordable Care Act. (Beginning in 2014, the Act will...

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