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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

Ninth Circuit Rehearing Petition Filed in Important Copyright Case: Do Consumers Own Their Own Software (or Books or Music)?

Posted on October 08, 2010
by Deepak Gupta Several weeks ago, my colleague Greg Beck blogged about a very significant and disturbing Ninth Circuit decision effectively holding that consumers don't own their own software. In Vernor v. Autodesk, a panel of the Ninth Circuit (Judges...

Elizabeth Warren's Speech to the Bankers

Posted on October 08, 2010
by Deepak Gupta Last week, Elizabeth Warren went into the lion's den, giving a dinner speech in Washington to the Financial Services Roundtable -- the banking industry's lobbying group. According to one account, she gave a "tough speech to bankers,...

Mobile Payments and Consumer Protection

Posted on October 08, 2010
With over two-thirds of the world?s population having a mobile phone, companies are rapidly developing ?mobile payment? options for consumers in both developed and developing nations. The University of Washington School of Law and Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy...

Daniel Schwarcz on Insurance Policy Transparency

Posted on October 08, 2010
Daniel Schwarcz of Minnesota has written The Need for Insurance Policy Transparency. Here's the abstract: This Article empirically debunks the common claim that homeowners insurance policies do not vary across different insurance carriers. It demonstrates that different carriers' homeowners policies...

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Will Russ Feingold, The Senate's Anti-Corporatist, Be Taken Down By Corporate Money?

Posted on October 07, 2010
Senator Russ Feingold voted against the PATRIOT Act and against the authorization of use of force in Iraq. Bucking his Democrat President, he voted against NAFTA. He broke with most Democrats and voted against the nomination of Timothy Geithner. He...

Amicus Briefs in AT&T v. Concepcion

Posted on October 06, 2010
by Deepak Gupta The amicus briefs supporting our side in AT&T v. Concepcion are due today. As they come in, we'll post them here and add them to the case webpage. (As most readers of this blog are probably aware,...

Deception and the CFPB

Posted on October 04, 2010
by Jeff Sovern The Dodd-Frank Act gives the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau the power to adopt regulations prohibiting deceptive, unfair, and abusive acts, and to bring actions against covered entities that are engaging in such acts. Dodd-Frank defines unfair and...

Prof. Cathy Sharkey on Williamson v. Mazda Motor

Posted on October 04, 2010
NYU law professor Cathy Sharkey has written "The Politics of Preemption: NHTSA, State Tort Law & Automobile Safety" at TortsProf Blog about a significant tort preemption case now before the Supreme Court. Worth reading.

Oregonian's Hunsberger on Rebate Cards

Posted on October 03, 2010
by Jeff Sovern The Oregonian's Personal Finance Columnist, Brent Hunsberger, has a column here on his experience with rebate cards. It turns out that some companies, instead of issuing rebate checks, are issuing cards loaded with the amount of the...

Ron Lieber Column: How ING's Mortgage Ads Are Misleading

Posted on October 02, 2010
Here. An excerpt: The ING Direct loan is called a 5/1 Orange Mortgage, and as of early September, it came with a 3.25 percent interest rate for the first five years and a projected interest rate of 3.375 percent for...

FCC Changes Its Safety Guidance On Cell Phone Use

Posted on October 01, 2010
In late June, we told you about San Francisco's ordinance requiring cell phone retailers to inform customers about raditaion from cell phones. Now, the Federal Communications Commission appears to be moving in another direction. In today's Washington Post, Cecilia Kang...

The Fair Elections Now Act

Posted on October 01, 2010
Law professor Lawrence Lessig has penned this op-ed in today's Washington Post in support of The Fair Elections Now Act, which would provide congressional candidates a 4-to-1 federal match for money raised by those candidates if they limited their private...

Larry Kirsch on the Fremont Case

Posted on October 01, 2010
Larry Kirsch of IMRHE, LLC has written The State Attorney General as Consumer Advocate: A Recent Effort to Tame Unfair Subprime Lending. Here's the abstract: In 2008, the Massachusetts Attorney General?s Office obtained a preliminary injunction in state court against...

ABC Nightline: Inside Consumer Reports

Posted on October 01, 2010
Here. (HT: Norm Silber)

Understanding The Financial Reform Legislation

Posted on September 30, 2010
This (somewhat) interactive site helps explain the new financial reform legislation.

NY Times: "Warren Seeks to Reassure Bankers on Protection Agency"

Posted on September 30, 2010
Here. Excerpts from her remarks, as reported in the Times: ?First, in the weeks and months ahead, I?m going to listen more than I?m going to talk, and I?m going to keep my door open,? ?And second, I am committed...

New Jersey Supreme Court Allows Mass-Marketing Fraud Class Action

Posted on September 30, 2010
Yesterday, the New Jersey Supreme Court handed down a unanimous 50-page opinion reversing the denial of certification in a mass marketing consumer fraud case. The case involves a dietary supplement known as Relacore -- a pill marketed as causing stress...

Class-Action Bans in the Supreme Court: Respondents' Brief in AT&T v. Concepcion

Posted on September 29, 2010
by Deepak Gupta Today we filed our merits brief for the respondents in the U.S. Supreme Court in AT&T v. Concepcion. The question in Concepcion is whether companies can use the fine print of take-it-or-leave-it contracts to strip consumers and...

A Disappointing Development at Google

Posted on September 29, 2010
by Paul Alan Levy Last month, Google announced a change in the way search results would be displayed: multiple search results will now be displayed from the single domain receiving the most clicks from search engine users. In the example...

Chase joins GMAC/Ally in Robo-signer Scandal

Posted on September 29, 2010
The Wall Street Journal reports today that JP Morgan Chase is suspending 56,000 pending foreclosures in order to review court documents signed improperly, in other words by robo-signers. See also the Huffpo story here. The growing scandal is getting wide...

Connecticut and California AGs Freeze Ally Financial's "Defective" Mortgage Foreclosure Program

Posted on September 28, 2010
Last week, CL&P blogger Alan White explained that Ally Financial was halting some of its foreclosure business in 23 states because of unspecified "defects" in its program. Now, we learn in this article in today's Washington Post that the Connecticut....

Attack on Arbitration Fairness Act

Posted on September 27, 2010
by Jeff Sovern Former Ninth Circuit Judge and Secretary of Education Shirley M. Hufstedler and Former Eighth Circuit Judge, FBI Director, and CIA Director William H. Webster have co-authored a piece in the National Law Journal, Arbitration Under Siege, criticizing...

Hospital Consolidation, Another Impediment To Health Care Cost Containment

Posted on September 26, 2010
As this article explains, a wave of hospital mergers is underway, giving hospitals increased bargaining power with insurers, in turn likely causing health care costs to increase.

Toxie's Dead

Posted on September 24, 2010
If you were listening to NPR this morning, you would have heard that Toxie the Toxic Asset has died. The folks at NPR's Planet Money had purchased for $1,000 (and a 99% discount!) a bundle of mortgages whose values had...

HAMP report: Banks not doing the Job

Posted on September 24, 2010
The taxpayer is being ill-served by the banks we bailed out, the same banks that signed contracts with Treasury to modify eligible mortgages and prevent foreclosures. The August report on the HAMP program confirms that a homeowner?s chances of negotiating...

World Progress Report Gaming Search Engines to Bury Reports Linking It to Scammers

Posted on September 24, 2010
by Paul Alan Levy I reported a couple of weeks ago that Vision Media TV Group, whose scam directed at unsophisticated non-profit groups thirsting for free publicity on public TV had apparently resurfaced under a new name, World Progress Report....

What Happens When You Tell Consumers You're Trying to Collect a Time-Barred Debt?

Posted on September 24, 2010
Nathalie Martin of New Mexico and Timothy E. Goldsmith of New Mexico's Psychology Department report the answer in Testing Materiality Under the Unfair Practices Acts: What Information Matters When Collecting Time-Barred Debts? Forthcoming in the Consumer Finance Law Quarterly Report...

Is Laurence Summers's announcement that he will resign a signal that the economy is headed for catastrophe?

Posted on September 23, 2010
Here's a fun one: Georgetown law prof Adam Levitin says at Credit Slips that there may be a "plausible personal reason" for Summers' decision to leave as head of the President's National Economic Council. But Levitin is worried that the...

Jeff Gelles Column on the Elizabeth Warren Appointment

Posted on September 23, 2010
Here. An excerpt: Warren can help for two big reasons, starting with the fact that, unlike most politicians who claim to be outsiders, she really is one. She's not wedded to Washington ways, or a prisoner of expectations that lobbyists...

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