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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

NACA Class Action Guidelines Published in Federal Rules Decisions

Posted on April 13, 2009
by Brian Wolfman In 1997, the National Association of Consumer Advocates published its ground breaking "Standards and Guidelines for Litigating and Settling Class Actions." These guidelines, published at 176 F.R.D. 375 (1997), sought to support the proper use of class...

Howell E. Jackson on the Trilateral Dilemma in Financial Regulation

Posted on April 13, 2009
Howell E. Jackson of Harvard has written The Trilateral Dilemma in Financial Regulation in IMPROVING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF FINANCIAL EDUCATION AND SAVINGS PROGRAM (Anna Maria Lusardi, ed., University of Chicago Press, 2008). Here's the abstract: In choosing financial products and...

Blind Readers in Fight with Amazon and Kindle Over Right to "Books on Tape"

Posted on April 12, 2009
Read this terrific post over at U.S. PIRG's consumer blog, chock full of great links. Here's the first paragraph: Last week, on a chilly day, over 350 advocates for the blind and others with print disabilities held a protest in...

Where Are the Consumer Protection Columnists?

Posted on April 11, 2009
by Jeff Sovern Consumer protection has been much in the news these days, but based on a quick look, there don't seem to be a lot of columnists who specialize in consumer protection. Take the New York Times, for example....

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BankofAmerica signs on to Home Affordable

Posted on April 11, 2009
Bank of America announced this week that it has begun refinancing mortgages at up to 105% of home values under the Fannie/Freddie Home Affordable program, part of the Administration's foreclosure relief plan. There are two main components to Home Affordable,...

More nonsense from defenders of marketplace deception

Posted on April 10, 2009
Yesterday (April 9), the Wall Street Journal ran an excellent article by Nathan Koppel on the changes to food companies' practices brought about by litigation, or the threat thereof. And by "excellent," I mean that it fairly and completely gave...

Eleventh Circuit Upholds FCRA's Statutory Damages Provision Against Constitutional Challenge

Posted on April 09, 2009
Today, in Harris, et al. v. Mexican Speciality Foods, et al., No. 08-13510 (11th Cir. Apr. 9, 2009), the Eleventh Circuit rejected a facial vagueness and excessiveness/due process challenge to the statutory damages provision of the Fair Credit Reporting Act...

Bill on Spam Text Messages

Posted on April 08, 2009
by Jeff Sovern PC World reports here on a bill aimed at spam sent as text messages to cell phones. The article quotes from sponsoring Senator Olympia Snowe's press release: "Mobile users in the U.S received about 1.1 million spam...

February and March Foreclosure Trends

Posted on April 08, 2009
By Alan White The numbers are not good for foreclosure trends in February and March. HOPE NOW's February data release shows a 12 % increase in foreclosure starts over January. Declines in October and November in new foreclosure filings were...

Oren Bar-Gill on The Law, Economics and Psychology of Subprime Mortgage Contracts

Posted on April 07, 2009
Oren Bar-Gill of NYU has written The Law, Economics and Psychology of Subprime Mortgage Contracts, 94 Cornell Law Review (2009). Here's the abstract: Over 4 million subprime loans were originated in 2006, bringing the total value of outstanding subprime loans...

Report on FTC Proposed Revisions to Endorsement Guidelines and Discrimination in Housing Sales in Chicago in the Fifties

Posted on April 06, 2009
One of the many nice things about teaching is that your students help you learn about your subject. One of my students, William Schleifer, brought to my attention this article in the Financial Times about the FTC's proposed revisions to...

Airline Consumer Rights Organization Negotiates Consumer-Friendly Deal With TSA

Posted on April 05, 2009
See the deal here. Thanks to the US PIRG's Consumer Blog for bringing this to our attention.

American Enterprise Institute's Michael Greve on Wyeth v. Levine

Posted on April 03, 2009
by Brian Woflman Writing in National Review Online, American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Greve has explained why he thinks the Supreme Court's recent no-preemption decision in Wyeth v. Levine fundamentally misunderstands principles of federalism and is a disaster for the...

94% of All Email is Spam

Posted on April 02, 2009
An online Times report, titled Spam Back to 94% of All E-Mail, is based on a report from Postini, a division of Google. So much for the federal statute, CAN-SPAM, as a spam preventative!

The Need to Protect Whistleblowers in Light of Newspaper Layoffs

Posted on April 02, 2009
by Paul Alan Levy There is an interesting discussion about the impact of the Internet (and the economic downturn) on the ability of the press to conduct in-depth investigations, and hence of the need to protect whistleblowers, in today?s Fourth...

Judicial Hellholes, Debunked

Posted on April 02, 2009
by Deepak Gupta Those of us who regularly read amicus briefs by the likes of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other self-styled tort reform groups are used to seeing references to "judicial hellholes" -- jurisdictions that supposedly embody a...

House Financial Services Committee Mark-up of Predatory Lending Bill

Posted on April 01, 2009
Here's the Committee's press release: Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC), along with Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, today introduced H.R. 1728, the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2009, aimed at curbing predatory...

Maybe Litigation Isn't Always the Best Solution for a Gripe Site Target

Posted on April 01, 2009
by Paul Alan Levy Postings on this blog have often pointed out the adverse consequences that follow when a company or politician tries to use litigation, or the threat of litigation, to suppress critical online speech -- particularly consumer criticism...

Senate Banking Committee Passes Credit Card Bill

Posted on March 31, 2009
Here's the Committee's Statement: Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, announced today that the Committee passed comprehensive legislation he authored to protect consumers from confusing, misleading and predatory practices by credit...

Ethics in Consumer Law: Reverse Logrolling

Posted on March 30, 2009
Ron Burdge, an excellent consumer lawyer in Ohio, recently posted a blog piece about the ethical issue of what to do when defense counsel tries to get you to agree (usually unethically) to lay off his weasel client in the...

Paper on Predatory Mortgage Lending

Posted on March 28, 2009
Philip Bond, David K. Musto, and Bilge Yilmaz, all of Penn's Finance Department, have written Predatory Mortgage Lending. Here's the abstract: Regulators express growing concern over predatory loans, which the authors take to mean loans that borrowers should decline...

Amy Schmitz on Consumer Warranty Arbitration

Posted on March 27, 2009
Amy Schmitz of Colorado has written Curing Consumer Warranty Woes Through Regulated Arbitration, 23 Ohio State Journal of Dispute Resolution. Here's the abstract: This article proposes legislative procedural reforms accounting for the realities of consumer arbitration that have threatened and...

Website Collects Medical Data and Uses That Data for Drug Company Solicitations

Posted on March 26, 2009
by Jeff Sovern Today's Times includes Online Age Quiz is a Window for Drug Makers, about a web site, RealAge, which tells you your "biological age" if you answer some 150 questions and offers suggestions for reducing that age. Sounds...

Does the Subprime Crisis Rebut Claims of Lending Discrimination?

Posted on March 25, 2009
by Jeff Sovern The extent of discrimination in lending has long been a hotly-debated subject. The famous Boston Fed Study, publicized in 1992 and later published as Alica H. Munnell, Geoffrey M.B. Tootell, Lynn E. Browne & James McEneaney, Mortgage...

New FTC Chair Testifies Before House on Consumer Credit Issues

Posted on March 24, 2009
by Deepak Gupta The House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommitee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection is holding a hearing this morning on "Consumer Credit and Debt: The Role of the Federal Trade Commission in Protecting the Public." Among...

FDIC Chair Speaks Out Against Federal Preemption of Consumer Laws

Posted on March 23, 2009
by Deepak Gupta FDIC chairman Sheila Bair says that, to protect consumers from aggressive lending practices, Congress should consider "curtailing" the powers of federal banking regulators to preempt state consumer protection laws. In testimony submitted to the Senate Banking Committee...

Study Finds Data Breach Laws Have Only Marginal Effect on Identity Theft

Posted on March 22, 2009
Sasha Romanosky, Rahul Telang, and Alessandro Acquisti, all of Carnegie Mellon, have co-authored Do Data Breach Disclosure Laws Reduce Identity Theft? Here's the abstract: Identity theft resulted in corporate and consumer losses of $56 billion dollars in 2005, with about...

Writing With Libel in Mind

Posted on March 20, 2009
Public Citizen has released a guide for bloggers and non-profit organizations about writing with libel considerations in mind. Nothing can more disable a critic of misconduct by companies or political figures than getting embroiled in a libel suit. Absent a...

Skiba and Tobacman on Whether Payday Loans Cause Bankruptcy

Posted on March 18, 2009
Paige Marta Skiba of Vanderbilt and Jeremy Tobacman of Penn have co-authored Do Payday Loans Cause Bankruptcy?. Here's the abstract: An estimated ten million American households borrow on payday loans each year. Despite the prevalence of these loans, little is...

Business pursuing anti-consumer legislation in this economy?

Posted on March 17, 2009
It just goes to show you: there is no time like the present. Even if the present is an economic mess caused by the lack of effective regulation and the plan is to introduce anti-consumer legislation to hamstring consumer (and,...

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