Consumer Law & Policy Blog

The danger of keyless car ignitions

Keyless car ignitions -- where the driver just pushes a button to start the car -- is very convenient. But can it be dangerous. This article says that "at least 60 U.S. drivers ... have parked cars with keyless ignitions in their garages, only to forget to push a button and turn the vehicles off." That can cause deadly exhaust to seep into a car owner's homes. So,"[s]afety advocates and survivors ... think the solution would be requiring car makers to install an alarm or software that kills the ignition after time has lapsed." Federal regulators have proposed a rule that would require an audible alert but not an automatic shutoff.

What amount of exercise correlates with optimal life expectancy?

Here.

Marotta-Wurgler Surveys Privacy Policies

Florencia Marotta-Wurgler of NYU has written Understanding Privacy Policies: Content, Self-Regulation, and Markets. Here is the abstract:

The current regulatory approach to consumer information privacy is based on a “notice and choice” self-regulation model, but commentators disagree on its impact. I conduct a comprehensive empirical analysis of 261 privacy policies across seven markets and measure the extent to which they comply with the self-regulatory guidelines of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), US-EU Safe Harbor Agreement, and others. I track terms involving notice, data collection, sharing, enforcement, security, and other practices, and create a measure of substantive protections. The average policy complies with 39% of the FTC guidelines issued in 2012, and there is no evidence that firms have updated their policies in response to these guidelines. Terms that require firms to bear costs or constrain their behavior are less likely to be included. Protections vary widely across markets, however: Adult sites offer the clearest notice of practices and report less data collection and sharing than other sites, while cloud computing firms report more extensively on data security practices. Overall, the results suggest that privacy policies are being shaped as much by market forces as by the current regulatory regime.

 

 

Beales & Murris on the FTC

Howard Beales of George Washington University's School of Business and Timothy J. Muris of George Mason have written FTC Consumer Protection at 100: 1970s Redux or Protecting Markets to Protect Consumers? 83 George Washington Law Review 2157(2015).  Here is the abstract:

Throughout most of the Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC” or “Commission”) history, the agency has been condemned as ineffective. Indeed, the prestigious 1969 American Bar Association Report said that the FTC should either change or be abolished. The disastrous decade of the 1970s followed, in which the FTC tried to become the second most powerful legislature in Washington. The Commission then finally developed a bipartisan regulatory program, recognizing that the FTC was not the star player in the economy but had an important role in enforcing the rules that facilitate market interactions. Following the ABA report’s recommendation, the program’s consumer protection foundation was a systematic and aggressive attack on consumer fraud.

This Article discusses this modern FTC, providing details on programs involving fraud, conventional advertising, and privacy. We explain how, embracing a more limited role and recognizing its past mistakes, the FTC became one of the world’s most widely respected government agencies. Unfortunately, the agency has recently lost its way in regulating traditional advertising, threatening to restrict truthful information to consumers that is vital to the optimal performance of competitive markets. We also discuss the newest part of the FTC’s mission, protecting consumer privacy. The heart of the program has been to prevent harmful misuse of sensitive information, most notably the National Do Not Call Registry, one of the most popular government initiatives ever. In attempting to broaden the basis for protection of privacy, the agency currently threatens to impede rapidly evolving information technology markets. 

Imre Szalai on Direct TV and Jedi Mind Tricks

Imre S. Szalai of Loyola New Orleans has written DIRECTV, Inc. v. Imburgia: How the Supreme Court Used a Jedi Mind Trick To Turn Arbitration Law Upside Down, 32 Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, 1, (2016 Forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) is the primary federal statute governing millions of arbitration agreements that have mushroomed in every nook and cranny of modern American society. The Supreme Court of the United States has grossly erred when construing and applying the FAA in a long series of cases spanning the last few decades, and these flawed decisions have encouraged this explosion of arbitration agreements across America. In its most recent FAA decision from December 2015, DIRECTV, Inc. v. Imburgia, 136 S. Ct. 463 (2015), the Supreme Court continued its awkward tradition of issuing preposterous FAA rulings. However, the Court in DIRECTV reached a new low, a result so extreme and “dangerous,” according to the dissenting Justices, that the Court’s DIRECTV decision turns arbitration law completely upside down.

This Article explores the Supreme Court’s deeply flawed interpretation of the FAA in DIRECTV. The Court’s decision desecrates the most fundamental principle of arbitration law, that arbitration must be based on the agreement of the parties. The Court in DIRECTV overrides the intent of the parties in this case, as well as the intent of Congress in enacting the FAA. The first part of this Article explains the background of the DIRECTV case. The second part of the Article closely examines the deep, multiple flaws in the opinion. Finally, the Article concludes by addressing how DIRECTV’s holding applies to some common hypotheticals in order to demonstrate the broader impact of this case in shutting off access to America’s civil justice system.

Payday lender indicted on racketeering charges

The Washington Post reports:

The head of a payday lending enterprise accused of charging more than 700 percent interest on short-term loans was indicted Thursday on federal racketeering charges.

Charles M. Hallinan, 75, led a group that preyed on customers while taking in nearly $700 million from 2008 to 2013, according to the indictment. Hallinan operated under a string of business names that included Easy Cash, My Payday Advance and Instant Cash USA, and defrauded at least 1,400 customers.

The full article is here.

CFPB director defends agency to Republican senators

The Hill reports:

The head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau defended its record Thursday to critical Republican senators, who charged it with preferring punitive action over transparent rules and stifling the country’s credit market through unaccountable actions.

CFPB Director Richard Cordray told the Senate Banking Committee that the agency's actions to crack down on allegedly discriminatory auto loans and predatory lending were helping the economy and consumers, not limiting access to financial products.

The full article is here.

Law Schools Need Adjuncts to Teach Consumer Law

In a recent post, Jeff Sovern noted that, “About two-thirds of US law schools offer neither a doctrinal course nor a clinic on consumer law, despite the significance of the subject.”

In many cases, this is because there are fewer law professors interested in teaching consumer, rather than a conscious effort on the part of the school to not teach the course. This opens the door for consumer attorneys to propose teaching the course as an adjunct. There are several consumer law casebooks, and in my opinion, a law school associate dean who receives an offer form a local attorney to teach the course will jump at the possibility.

For those who may be interested in teaching, the Center for Consumer Law at the University of Houston Law Center is presenting its bi-annual conference for consumer law professors and adjunct professors. The conference is especially valuable to anyone interested in teaching consumer law as an adjunct professor.

The Conference will be held May 20-21 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Registration forms, program schedule and hotel information is now available for "Teaching Consumer Law in Our Popular Culture and Social Media.” The program will include discussions of teaching methods, substantive updates, and discussions of current consumer law issues, empirical studies of consumer issues, as well as discussions about the CFPB and the FTC. Presenters include the top consumer law scholars and attorneys from the U.S., as well as Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Ireland, Nigeria, India, Holland, Denmark and China. 

For more information and to register, click here. 

On tort reform and unintended consequence in sexual abuse cases

“If you rape a child, you get the benefit of tort reform." That comment, from the lawyer of a woman who was raped as a teenager by a youth pastor in Ohio, sums up the problem covered in a recent Slate article, which explains how damages caps can limit the recovery for victims of sexual violence. The article focuses on a case in which a verdict was cut from $3.5 million to $250,000.

The question whether Ohio's cap on damages is unconstitutional as applied to sexual assault cases is now before the Ohio Supreme Court.

Read more here.

NCLC and ACLU sue Dep't of Education for student-debt collection data

Last week, the National Consumer Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union sued to enforce a FOIA request to the U.S. Department of Education seeking information on the Department's policies concerning collections on student loan debt.

As the press release explains, the groups are concerned about differential treatment of student borrowers of color and that policies governing private student-loan debt collectors provide incentives to violate borrowers' rights.

Read the release here, and the complaint here.