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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

Jack Kemp on Using Bankruptcy Law to Help Mortage Borrowers

Posted on January 23, 2008
Jack Kemp, former Member of Congress, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Republican vice presidential candidate, has a column here in the Christian Science Monitor supporting changes in the bankruptcy laws to help consumers facing default on their mortgage...

U.S. News Article on Rebates

Posted on January 22, 2008
U.S. News and World Reports has an article on rebates, titled "Why Shoppers Love to Hate Rebates" that gives both sides of the debate. A self-serving excerpt: Jim Wohlever, chief executive at Young America, explains that companies could not afford...

Using Choice-of-Law Clauses to Defeat State Consumer Law Protections

Posted on January 21, 2008
After the California Supreme Court found unconscionable a clause banning class actions in a consumer arbitration contract in Discover Bank v. Superior Court, 36 Cal.4th 148, 30 Cal. Rptr.3d 76, 113 P.3d 1100 (2005), the lower court, on remand, relied...

Nancy S. Kim on the Effect of Clickwrap and Similar Licenses

Posted on January 20, 2008
Nancy S. Kim of California Western School of Law has authored "Clicking and Cringing," available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1003921, on the effect of shrinkwrap, clickwrap, and browsewrap licenses. Here's the abstract: Shrinkwrap, clickwrap and browsewrap licenses have complicated contract law by introducing...

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How Much Do Consumers Value Not Getting Telemarketing Calls?

Posted on January 19, 2008
In a paper titled "On the Value of Privacy from Telemarketing: Evidence from the 'Do Not Call' Registry," and available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1000533, Ivan P.L. Png of the National University of Singapore, estimates the value of privacy at a surprisingly low...

New York State's Human Rights Division Files Landmark Suits Against Sellers of Tax Refund Anticipation Loans

Posted on January 19, 2008
by Brian Wolfman The New York State Human Rights Division has just filed first-of-their-kind suits against firms that market tax refund anticipation loans (RALs). The suits claim that the firms' RAL businesses illegally target African-American and hispanic consumers and members...

Mortgage Modifications: More Data

Posted on January 17, 2008
By Alan White As often happens when writing about the foreclosure crisis, my last comment on foreclosures and loan modifications was obsolete almost as soon as I posted it. Today the Mortgage Bankers Association released a thorough study of foreclosures,...

Loan modifications: still not happening

Posted on January 16, 2008
by Alan White Hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure are calling mortgage servicers in the hopes of negotiating a solution to keep their homes. What happens when they call? The news is not good. Moody?s rating agency reported in...

Predatory Borrowing?

Posted on January 15, 2008
Sunday's Times reported here on a study by BasePoint Analytics of more than three million loans. According to the article, the study found that "[a]s much as 70 percent of recent early payment defaults had fraudulent misrepresentations on their original...

City of Baltimore Sues Wells Fargo Over Predatory and Discriminatory Mortgage Lending

Posted on January 14, 2008
by Brian Wolfman Read this Baltimore Sun article about the City of Baltimore's suit alleging that Wells Fargo engaged in predatory and racially discriminatory lending against Baltimore citizens. Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon, pictured to the left, is behind the suit...

P2P Lending

Posted on January 12, 2008
Check out this article about P2P (person-to-person) lending in today's Washington Post.

Mortgage Servicers, Bankruptcy, and Phony Evidence

Posted on January 10, 2008
At an almost comical December 20 hearing an attorney for Countrywide explained some fishy-looking documents to a Bankruptcy Court judge and trustee. The letters presented as evidence, sent to notify a homeowner of payment adjustments in 2003 during her Chapter...

Debt collectors in the US may not be so bad, after all

Posted on January 09, 2008
Not compared with debt collectors in India, anyway. Vinod Kumar was sitting in a friend's car listening to the radio one evening last January when a stranger appeared, yanked him from the vehicle and beat him with an iron bar....

Social Security Moving to Debit Cards

Posted on January 07, 2008
Over at Credit Slips, Adam Levitin has this excellent post on the Social Security Administration's decision to begin to distribute some social security benefits in the form of debit cards rather than by traditional check. The move has the potential...

Presidential candidates on toy safety

Posted on January 05, 2008
Carey Greenberg-Berger at the Consumerist followed up my digging into presidential candidates' participation in consumer legislation with some more digging, and looked into the candidates' rhetoric on toy safety, one of the "hot" consumer issues of 2007...

eBay Strikes Back, Sues for Frivolous DMCA Takedowns

Posted on January 05, 2008
by Greg Beck A while back I wrote about a case in which an eBay seller sued a company called Innovate! Technology for wrongly invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to cancel his eBay auctions. Although the company claimed that...

Would the Close-Connectedness Doctrine Help Defrauded Subprime Borrowers?

Posted on January 04, 2008
Apparently one of the big problems for defrauded subprime borrowers who seek redress is that the mortgage originators are judgment-proof while transferees with the assets to satisfy a judgment are protected by the holder in due course doctrine. But what...

UK Consumer Law Latest

Posted on January 02, 2008
Review of the Consumer Protection Regime in the UK launched by Government The British Government has launched a review of the Consumer Protection Regime in the UK. Consumer protection in the UK is the result of several decades of development...

Presidential candidates' votes on 2007 consumer legislation

Posted on January 01, 2008
First, happy New Year and thanks to Deepak for inviting me to take part in the Consumer Law & Policy blog! I am a consumer rights attorney in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I publish a blog of my own, Caveat Emptor....

University of Oregon Takes Legal Stand Against RIAA In Downloading Suits

Posted on January 01, 2008
This story in yesterday's New York Times describes how the University of Oregon is standing up for what it believes are its students' privacy and due process rights by refusing to give up the students' identities in suits by the...

A Look Back at the Year 2007 in Federal Consumer Protection Legislation

Posted on December 31, 2007
Just in time for New Year's Eve, the folks at The Consumerist have compiled a handy list of significant federal consumer-protection legislation that was introduced in the year 2007. Of the 7,440 bills introduced this year, the editors identified less...

Sarah Ludington Article on Liability for Traders in Consumer Information

Posted on December 31, 2007
Sarah Ludington of Duke's article "Reining in the Data Traders: A Tort for the Misuse of Personal Information, " in 66 Maryland Law Review, can be found at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1008343. Here's the abstract: In 2005, three spectacular data security breaches focused...

Dutch Government Mandates Open Source Software

Posted on December 30, 2007
A new Dutch law will require that Dutch government agencies use open source software - - non-proprietary programs that anyone can modify and that work with a variety of technology - - unless proprietary software is necessary to accomplish their...

Fourth Circuit FCRA Identity Theft Decision: Sloane v. Equifax

Posted on December 29, 2007
Readers of this blog will likely be interested in the Fourth Circuit's recent Fair Credit Reporting Act decision in Sloane v. Equifax, No. 06-2044 (Dec. 27, 2007). The case concerns an instance of identity theft that severely affected the plaintiff's...

Jennifer Chandler on Negligence Liability for Breaches in Data Security

Posted on December 28, 2007
Jennifer A. Chandler of the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law has authored "Negligence Liability for Breaches of Data Security," forthcoming in the Banking and Finance Law Review. Here's the abstract: Due to the concern over identity fraud, data security...

Video Professor Drops Lawsuit Against Anonymous Critics

Posted on December 28, 2007
by Greg Beck Colorado infomercial company Video Professor this week dismissed its lawsuit against 100 anonymous defendants who had posted critical comments about its products and billing practices online. Earlier this month, the company withdrew subpoenas that had sought the...

Robert Hunt Primer on Debt Collection

Posted on December 27, 2007
Robert M. Hunt on the Fed has written "Collecting Consumer Debt in America" available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=993249. Here's the abstract: Why should economic scholars study the consumer debt collection process? First, the cost and effectiveness of the collections process has implications...

More ABA cowtowing to the defense bar

Posted on December 26, 2007
Most plaintiff lawyers long ago concluded that the American Bar Association should really be called the "American Defense Bar Association," because of a bias in favor of white-shoe, tall-building defense lawyers and the evildoers they represent. The ABDA (whoops, I...

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