Consumer Law & Policy Blog

A Negative Growth Decade

As this article explains, the decade that we just completed was the first since the relevant data have been kept in which the economy did not grow and personal income and wealth did not rise.

Class Action Brought in Debt Collection Sewer Service Scandal

Last summer we blogged about the New York State Attorney General's suit to vacate 100,000 debt collection cases in which the defendants had allegedly never been served because of fraud by process servers.  The Times now reports that a class action has been brought on behalf of the defendants who were never served.  An excerpt about the defendants:

The class-action lawsuit filed on Monday goes after an entire debt collection chain, starting with the debt-buying companies, the law firm they hired to collect the debt, and the process-serving firm used to notify debtors. The suit names five debt-buyer firms with variations of the names L-Credit and LR Credit. All are subsidiaries of Leucadia National, a $6 billion publicly traded holding company engaged in various businesses, including timber and manufacturing. The company, which is also named as a defendant, declined comment on the suit.

2010 Will Bring New Laws and Rules for Consumer Credit

This article in yesterday's Washington Post provides a nice synopsis of the new laws and regulations that will take effect in 2010 concerning credit cards, credit reports, and bank overdraft protection. All of it is supposed to benefit consumers over current law.