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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

House Judiciary Holds Hearing on Credit Card Industry's Use of Arbitration To Quash Consumer Claims

Posted on May 05, 2009
David Arkush, the director of Public Citizen?s Congress Watch division, is testifying this morning at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, on the need for arbitration fairness legislation. The focus of the hearing...

President Obama To Nominate New CPSC Commission Chair and Fill Another Commission Slot; Announces Intention to Increase Commission Size and Seek Greater Funding

Posted on May 05, 2009
This article explains that President Obama will nominate Inez Moore Tenenbaum as the new Chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. If confirmed, Ms. Tenenbaum would replace Acting Chair Nancy Nord. Ms. Tenenbaum served two terms as South Carolina's Superintendent...

News Flash: Lawyer Jobs Available at Public Citizen Litigation Group

Posted on May 05, 2009
For the first time in five years, Public Citizen Litigation Group is hiring staff lawyers -- two in fact. If you are interested in doing cutting-edge consumer and other public interest litigation, take a look at the job announcement. And...

Ray Brescia on the Community Reinvestment Act's Link to the Financial Crisis

Posted on May 04, 2009
Ray Brescia of Albany has written Part of the Disease or Part of the Cure: The Financial Crisis and the Community Reinvestment Act, 60 University of Sourthern Carolina Law Review 617 (2009). Here's the abstract: Some commentators charge that the...

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On Arbitration Fairness: Stop the ABA From Taking the Corporate Side Against Civil Rights and Consumers

Posted on May 03, 2009
by Paul Bland I?ve gotten caught up in scores of e-mails and requests from angry lawyers asking "what can I do about the ABA getting hijacked?" This blog post has my answer. It?s a pretty well-recognized phenomenon that lawyers who...

More on the Credit Card Holders' Bill of Rights

Posted on May 02, 2009
We reported yesterday on the House's overwhelming passage of this legislation. Read the statment of Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D - NY), the principal sponsor of the legislation. Another note: While there was substantial difference of opinion among Republicans (voting in...

Why Allowing Pre-Dispute Arbitration Opt-Out Clauses Is Not Effective Consumer Protection

Posted on May 01, 2009
by Jeff Sovern One possible alternative to the Arbitration Fairness Act is an approach that permits consumers, when entering into contracts that contain pre-dispute arbitration clauses, to opt-out of arbitration before a dispute has arisen. This approach permits the illusion...

AOL Posts "Debt Collection Horror Stories"

Posted on April 30, 2009
AOL has posted a collection of what they call "Debt Collection Horror Stories" which they describe as true stories involving AOL users. (Hat tip: Arlene Levitin).

House Passes Creditcard Holders' Bill of Rights

Posted on April 30, 2009
Over at the U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog (one of my favorite blogs), Ed Mierzwinski is reporting that the House has passes the Creditcard Holders' Bill of Rights bill.

House Financial Services Committee Passes Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Billl

Posted on April 30, 2009
Here's the Committee's statement: The House Financial Services Committee today approved H.R. 1728, the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2009, aimed at curbing abusive and predatory lending ? a major factor in the nation?s highest home foreclosure rate...

Poll: Voters Oppose Forced Arbitration

Posted on April 29, 2009
Americans widely oppose corporations using mandatory binding arbitration clauses in the fine print of consumer and employment contracts, according to national polling of likely voters conducted by Lake Research Partners and released today. The poll shows that: 6 in 10...

Today Is Arbitration Fairness Day!

Posted on April 29, 2009
As we previously reported, the Fair Arbitration Now coalition is holding a press conference and lobby day in Washington, D.C. today. At the press conference (at noon today at the Senate Dirksen Office Building, Room 608), the coalition will release...

Supreme Court Hears "Enforcement Preemption" Case

Posted on April 28, 2009
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments this morning in an important preemption case, Cuomo v. The Clearinghouse Association, which we've discussed here before. The question in the case is the extent to which the Office of the Comptroller of the...

ACORN Report Urges Other Communities to Adopt Philadelphia Approach to Reducing Foreclosures

Posted on April 28, 2009
ACORN has released a report, Road to Rescue: How the Philadelphia Model Can Reduce Foreclosures Across the Country. Here's an excerpt from the Executive Summary: Philadelphia has pioneered an innovative and remarkably effective foreclosure prevention program that requires lenders to...

Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler is a Dumpster Diver!

Posted on April 27, 2009
Check out this great Washington Post article explaining why former FDA commissioner David Kessler hangs around dumpsters at fast-food joints. Kessler was trying to figure out why many of us are junk-food addicts. Here's a teaser: The high-octane career path...

Outrage in Ohio: An Unfair Decision on Arbitration

Posted on April 26, 2009
by Paul Bland and Tami Alpert (Power-Cotchett Felow, Public Justice) Something really crazy has happened in Ohio. Last summer an Ohio State Court of Appeals held that, under Ohio law, if a company claims there is an agreement to arbitrate,...

Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights

Posted on April 25, 2009
Read the New York Times endorsement of the legislation.

Adam Levitin on How States Can Regulate National Bank Lending by Regulating the Secondary Market

Posted on April 24, 2009
Adam Levitin of Georgetown has written Hydraulic Regulation: Regulating Credit Markets Upstream, 26 Yale Journal of Regulation (2009), the imaginative thesis of which he presented at the AALS meeting in San Diego. Here's the abstract: Consumer protection in financial services...

House Financial Services Committee Passes Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act on to House

Posted on April 22, 2009
The House Financial Services Committee is reporting here that it has passed the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act and reported it to the full House. UPDATE: Here's the Committee press release: The House Financial Services Committee today approved legislation...

Signs of life at the FTC

Posted on April 21, 2009
Yesterday, the FTC showed significant signs of life, announcing a consent decree against the Kellogg Company for claiming that it had scientific proof that its Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal improved children's attentiveness by 20 percent (!!!). In terms of sheer gall...

Judge Richard Posner Questions the Free Market and Calls for More Financial Regulation

Posted on April 21, 2009
Check this out.

New Proposed Credit Card Regulations

Posted on April 21, 2009
The Fed, OTS, and NCUA today announced proposed changes to their credit card regulations. The press release is as follows: The Federal Reserve Board, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the National Credit Union Administration today proposed clarifications to aspects...

Fair Arbitration Coalition, Website & Blog Announced

Posted on April 21, 2009
A newly formed coalition is calling on Congress to stand up for employees and consumers and ensure companies are held accountable for misdeeds by passing legislation to end forced arbitration. The goal of the Fair Arbitration Now Coalition is to...

I'm a Class Member!

Posted on April 19, 2009
by Jeff Sovern Sometimes consumer law strikes home. I just received a notice of a proposed settlement of a consumer class action, and I might actually be a member of the class! The defendant is Symantec, which makes the antivirus...

Do Law Students Get What They Pay for When Law Professors Blog?

Posted on April 18, 2009
by Jeff Sovern The question assumes that law students pay for faculty blogging, in that the tuition they pay goes to law faculty salaries. That assumption is probably true, in that most law schools are largely tuition-driven, meaning that law...

Using the DMCA to Remove a Video Because It Is Embarrassing

Posted on April 16, 2009
by Paul Alan Levy The New York Times has a story today about a video prank and its consequences for Domino's. Two employees made up a story about polluting products at Domino's pizza with mucus and such, made some short...

Skiba and Tobacman on Patterns of Borrowing, Repayment, and Default in Payday Loans

Posted on April 16, 2009
Paige Marta Skiba of Vanderbilt and Jeremy Tobacman of Penn have co-authored Payday Loans, Uncertainty and Discounting: Explaining Patterns of Borrowing, Repayment, and Default. Here's the abstract: Ten million American households borrowed on payday loans in 2002...

Colbert Report on the Gutierrez "Protect Payday Lenders" Bill

Posted on April 15, 2009
Earlier this year Representative Louis Gutierrez (D-IL) reversed his longstanding opposition to payday lending by sponsoring a bill that would authorize payday loans under federal law for the first time. Represntative Gutierrez is touting the bill as a crack down...

David Vladeck to Head Bureau of Consumer Protection

Posted on April 14, 2009
by Deepak Gupta FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz today announced six senior staff appointments, drawn from the private sector, the public interest community, academia, and government. Most notable (at least to us) is the appointment of former Public Citizen litigator and...

Mini-Doc on Credit Card Legislation

Posted on April 13, 2009
Check out this great new Youtube mini-documentary about the ongoing fight over credit card legislation in Congress. It's by Harry Hanbury of the investigative video journalism group American News Project. Consumer advocates Ed Mierzwinski of U.S. PIRG and Travis Plunkett...

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