Given the pervasiveness of subscription contracts, regulation of such contracts has become a much more important consumer protection topic. And here is an article that tells us how to do that: Kaitlin Ainsworth Caruso of Maine and Prentiss Cox of Minnesota’s Silence as Consumer Consent: Global Regulation of Negative Option Contracts, American University Law Review, Forthcoming. Here’s the abstract: Worldwide, the “subscription economy” has exploded in recent years, especially among online sellers of consumer goods and services. These subscriptions use various contract forms– but many have one ..read more

In a decision issued today, New York’s Appellate Division for the First Department reversed a decision of the state supreme court that had ordered Google and GoDaddy to identify BehindMLM, the author of a blog about multilevel marketing schemes, and quashed subpoenas to Google (the host of the blog) and GoDaddy (the registrar of the domain name). Identification had been sought by a purveyor of various cryptocurrency investment schemes called GSB Gold Standard Corporation (among other names). I discussed the facts of the case last fall. As noted in our appellate briefs, GSB’s situation has grow ..read more

The Supreme Court today issued a unanimous decision on an issue concerning the scope of preemption under the National Bank Act. In this case, a borrower sued Bank of America for failing to pay interest on his mortgage escrow account, as required by New York law. The bank argued that the National Bank Act preempts the state law, and the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit agreed, adopting a broad standard under which all state laws that “exert control” over a national bank’s exercise of a federal banking power are preempted, regardless of whether the state law has a significant effect on th ..read more

Washington, D.C. or Texas. Which jurisdiction will ultimately hear the merits of an industry lawsuit challenging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s rule to limit credit card late fees? For the second time since the industry lawsuit against the CFPB was filed in March, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals paused a U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas’ order moving the dispute from Texas to D.C. The first time the Texas district court transferred the case, the Fifth Circuit intervened, claiming that a pending industry motion needed to be heard, leading the case to be reo ..read more

The Federal Trade Commission sent its annual report to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on the FTC’s 2023 enforcement and related activities on the Truth in Lending Act, Consumer Leasing Act, and Electronic Fund Transfer Act. The report highlights the FTC’s enforcement actions and initiatives under these laws and their implementing regulations, including in the areas of automobile financing and leasing, payday lending, other credit and leasing, and electronic fund transfers. The post FTC’s report on 2023 activities re TILA, CLA, and EFTA appeared first on CLP Blog ..read more

Piotr Tereszkiewicz of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow – Faculty of Law and Administration and KU Leuven – Faculty of Law has written Cruising Beyond Car Dealer Dominance, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Forthcoming. Here’s the abstract: The automotive industry plays a pivotal role in both the American economy and daily life. This Article contends that the industry’s power dynamics detrimentally affect consumer welfare and posits that the law has a central role in mitigating this effect. Critiquing U.S. state laws governing franchised automotive dealers, it argues ..read more

Claire Johnson Raba of Illinois-Chicago and California-Irvine and Dalié Jiménez of California- Irvine and Harvard’s Center on the Legal Profession have written Pay to Plead: Finding Unfairness and Abusive Practices in California Debt Collection Cases. Here’s the abstract: In this Article, we report on one of the largest studies of debt collection lawsuits ever attempted. We collect, normalize, and analyze a data set of 2.2 million court records from 16 California counties, spanning eleven years (2009-2020) and representing 80 percent of the state’s population. An overwhelming majority of ..read more

From today’s decision in Coinbase, Inc. v. Suski. Longtime readers will recall the empirical evidence that consumers do not understand arbitration clauses and so, in my view, they have not “actually agreed” to arbitration clauses. The post SCOTUS: “disputes are subject to arbitration if, and only if, the parties actually agreed to arbitrate those disputes.” appeared first on CLP Blog ..read more

I often get emails from reporters seeking comment on a consumer law matter. When I can, I answer their questions, but frequently they want someone who knows about an aspect of consumer law I don’t know that much about. In such cases, I refer them to someone else when I know of a better choice or can find them in a quick SSRN search, but I don’t always know of such a person. If you are a consumer law professor and would like me to send them your way, please email me at jsovern@law,umaryland.edu and tell me what you are knowledgeable about. The more specific, the better, and if you know the cons ..read more

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau analyzed several hundred consumer complaints relating to the administration of credit card rewards programs and identified four recurring themes that resulted in consumers not receiving the rewards they were promised: (1) unexpected promotional conditions, (2) devaluation, (3) redemption problems, and (4) revocation. The report is here. The post Report describes problems with credit-card rewards programs appeared first on CLP Blog ..read more