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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

A Comment on the New Credit Card Solicitation Disclosures

Posted on January 29, 2009
by Jeff Sovern I have commented before on the December amendments to the credit card provisions of Regulation Z (here and here) but I find that as I prepare to teach them, I have a bit more to say. You...

Block-Lieb and Wiener on Whether Disclosure Helps Prevent Overindebtedness

Posted on January 28, 2009
Susan Block-Lieb of Fordham and Richard L. Wiener of Nebraska have co-authored Disclosure as an Imperfect Means for Addressing Overindebtedness: An Empirical Assessment of Comparative Approaches. Here's the abstract: Within a generation, household overindebtedness has grown to become a social...

Fed to Write Down Mortgage Balances

Posted on January 28, 2009
Yesterday Chairman Bernanke announced in a letter to Congressman Barney Frank that the Fed will include principal reductions in its plan to modify mortgages that it controls through Maiden Lane LLC, a vehicle set up by the Fed to hold...

Nationalize the Banks, Modify the Mortgages

Posted on January 27, 2009
By Alan WhiteNo more than 10 companies now service most of the mortgages in the U.S, including the four big banks (Citi, Wells Fargo, Chase and BofA). Ocwen is aggressively modifying mortgages, including principal writedowns, and is reporting good results,...

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Gail Hillebrand of Consumers Union on Payments Law

Posted on January 26, 2009
Gail Hillebrand of Consumers Union has written Before the Grand Rethinking: Five Things to Do Today with Payments Law and Ten Principles to Guide New Payments Products and New Payments Law, 82 Chicago-Kent Law Review 769 (2008). Here's the abstract:....

Times Piece by Debt Collector and Reports on Other Consumer Issues

Posted on January 25, 2009
Today's Times has a piece written by a debt collector about how he helps people, In Tough Times, A Debt Collector Sees the Pain. An excerpt: When someone calls back and thanks you for suggesting they get the debt resolved...

Simkovic Study Finds 2005 Bankruptcy Act Profits Credit Card Companies at Consumers' Expense

Posted on January 23, 2009
Michael Simkovic of Harvard's Olin Center for Law and Economics has written The Effect of 2005 Bankruptcy Reforms on Credit Card Industry Profits and Prices. Here's the abstract: The U.S. Bankruptcy code changed dramatically with the passage of The Bankruptcy...

Soliciting Suggestions for Selected Consumer Statutes

Posted on January 22, 2009
My co-authors and I are planning to come out with a new edition of Selected Consumer Statutes, the statutory supplement to the casebook, ideally in time for fall classes. While we've been able to incorporatethe amendments to TILA, Regulation Z,...

Hillman and Barakat on Warranties and Disclaimers in the Electronic Age

Posted on January 21, 2009
Robert A. Hillman of Cornell and Ibrahim Barakat of White and Case have written Warranties and Disclaimers in the Electronic Age. Here's the abstract: This paper reports on software-licensor express warranty and disclaimer practices on the Internet. Our data show...

Times Reports on Loan Fraud, Foreclosure Rescue Scams, Financial Advice, and More

Posted on January 21, 2009
Sunday's issue brought Robert J. Shiller's Economic View column, How About a Stimulus for Financial Advice?, suggesting that the government subsidize personal financial counseling and that if it had done so years ago, the housing bubble would have been less...

Supreme Court Takes Bank Preemption Case

Posted on January 18, 2009
On Friday the Court took Cuomo v. Clearing House Association, 08-453. After then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer had sought information from national banks in connection with an inquiry into racial discrimination by the banks, the OCC sued the Attorney General's Office...

Nudging Mortgage Borrowers

Posted on January 16, 2009
Now that the Fed is moving closer to a libertarian paternalism Nudge-like approach to credit card statements (we blogged about it here; and there's more on the Nudge web site about it here), perhaps it will consider using a similar...

A Nudge to Make Timely Credit Card Payments

Posted on January 14, 2009
One of the things I love about the new amendments to Regulation Z is that they require that credit card monthly statements have a "Late Payment Warning" next to the payment due date. The Late Payment Warning advises consumers that...

New Fair Credit Reporting Act Ruling From 11th Circuit

Posted on January 13, 2009
by Brian WolfmanCheck out Levine v. World Financial Network, No. 08-10416 (11th Cir. Jan. 12, 2008), a new Fair Credit Reporting Act decision from the Eleventh Circuit. Experian, the mammoth credit reporting company, sold a credit report about the plaintiff...

2009 Email Supplement to Casebook Now Available

Posted on January 12, 2009
My co-authors and I have put together a new supplement to our consumer law casebook and the accompanying Selected Consumer Statute. As a measure of how much has been happening in consumer law, this is our third update since the...

Scientists at FDA's Medical Device Center Claim Agency is Mismanaged and Bends to Manufacturers' Demands

Posted on January 11, 2009
CNN is reporting that nine scientists at the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Devices and Radiological Health have written a six-page letter to President-elect Barack Obama and his transition team, alleging gross mismanagement at the agency that has "placed...

NHTSA Recalls for December 2008

Posted on January 09, 2009
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued these recalls in December 2008.

Good Judgment by the Martin Luther King Estate in Not Misusing Trademark Law to Suppress Racist Speech

Posted on January 07, 2009
by Paul Alan LevyWe have often discussed the misuse of intellectual property law claims by corporations and public figures to suppress speech that they do not like (for example, here, here, and here). A recent story in the Atlanta Journal...

Countrywide settles predatory lending complaint

Posted on January 06, 2009
by Richard AldermanCountrywide Financial Corp. has agreed to make loan modifications for about 395,000 mortgage holders and pay $150 million into a foreclosure relief fund to settle predatory lending complaints filed by various states. For more information, click here.

More Consumer Law at the AALS

Posted on January 06, 2009
The AALS has announced a few additional panels on "hot topics," including the following event, at which Lauren Willis, whose work I greatly admire, will speak: Friday, January 9, 2009, 8:30-10:15 am, The Financial Crisis, Marriott Salon 2, Marriott Pavilion/Lobby...

Different Take on New RESPA Reg

Posted on January 05, 2009
This is NCLC?s take on HUD?s new RESPA Regulation changes. [Although under my name, this was written by Diane Thompson with input from other NCLC staffers.] The new Good Faith Estimate Statement (GFE) does seem much more user-friendly?with a couple...

Times Articles on Credit and Other Matters

Posted on January 04, 2009
I have accumulated a huge pile of articles from the New York Times on consumer issues, so here goes an attempt to shrink it somewhat. Today's Times includes an editorial, A Voice for the Consumer, urging the Obama Administration to...

December 2008 CPSC Product Safety Recalls

Posted on January 03, 2009
Check out the Consumer Product Safety Commission's December 2008 product safety recalls.

Jeffrey Stempel on Mandating Minimum Quality in Mass Arbitration

Posted on January 02, 2009
Jeffrey W. Stempel of UNLV has written Mandating Minimum Quality in Mass Arbitration, 76 Univ. Cincinnati L. Rev. 383 (2008). Here's the abstract: The Supreme Court's decision in McMahon and its progeny has led many businesses and employers to embrace...

Collective Bargaining with Card Issuers?

Posted on January 01, 2009
Happy New Year to all, and may I say, good riddance to 2008 (economically speaking that is). Yesterday's New York Times has a good story about the relationships between credit card issuers and universities. Banks offer kickbacks to colleges who...

Buyology and Consumer Law

Posted on December 30, 2008
I've been listening to the audio version of Martin Lindstrom's Buyology, a book about the neurological basis of marketing. Lindstrom is a branding expert and marketer and reports on what brain scans have contributed to the art of marketing. For...

A Comment on HUD's New RESPA Regulations

Posted on December 28, 2008
Last month, when HUD came out with its new RESPA regs, we blogged about it here. I've been going through the regs more carefully in connection with an update to our casebook that my co-authors and I are preparing (we're...

Times Article About WaMu's Striking Lending Decisions

Posted on December 28, 2008
The Times has an amazing article today, By Saying Yes, WaMu Built Empire on Shaky Loans, about Washington Mutual's loan decision-making process. The article describes how one now-jailed supervisor kept drug paraphernalia on his desk, claims by borrowers were rarely...

Times Examines How the Bush Administration Contributed to the Subprime Crisis

Posted on December 27, 2008
Last Sunday, December 21, the Times published White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire, a lengthy study of how the Bush Administration contributed to the subprime bubble. The article describes how the Bush administration policies of promoting both free enterprise and...

Norm Silber on Late Payment Fees

Posted on December 26, 2008
One of my favorite writers on consumer law, Norm Silber of Hofstra, has written Late Charges, Regular Billing, and Reasonable Consumers: A Rationale for a Late Payment Act, 83 Chicago Kent L. Rev. 855 (2008). Here's the abstract: This essay...

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