FTC issues FY 2016 National Do Not Call Registry Data Book

The Federal Trade Commission has issued the National Do Not Call Registry Data Book for Fiscal Year 2016. Consumers can use the National Do Not Call Registry to choose not to receive telemarketing calls.

Now in its eighth year of publication, the Data Book contains a wealth of information about the Registry for FY 2016 (from October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2016), including:

• The number of active registrations and consumer complaints since the Registry began in 2003;
• FY 2016 complaint figures by month and type;
• FY 2016 registration and complaint figures for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, by population;
• Rankings of the number of Do Not Call registrations, by state population;
• The number of entities accessing the Registry by fiscal year; and
• An appendix with registration and complaint figures organized by consumer state and area code.

CFPB enters into consent orders with 3 reverse mortgage companies accused of deceptive advertising

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has entered into consent orders with three reverse mortgage companies for deceptive advertisements, including claiming that consumers could not lose their homes. The CFPB is ordering American Advisors Group, Reverse Mortgage Solutions, and Aegean Financial to cease deceptive advertising practices, implement systems to ensure they are complying with all laws, and pay penalties totalling $780,000.

A reverse mortgage is a type of home loan that allows homeowners who are 62 or older to access the equity they have built up in their homes and defer payment of the loan until they pass away, sell, or move out. The loan proceeds are generally provided to the borrowers as lump-sum payments, monthly payments, or as lines of credit. Homeowners remain responsible for payment of taxes, insurance and home maintenance, among other obligations. 

The Mortgage Acts and Practices Advertising Rule prohibits misleading claims in mortgage advertising. In addition, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act prohibits institutions from engaging in deceptive acts or practices, including with regard to advertising of consumer financial products or services.

The CFPB statement, with links to the three consent orders, is here.

Am. Banker: Trump vs. Cordray: The Battle Ahead

Here (free content). The entire article is worth a read, but here are some highlights:

J.W. Verret, an associate law professor at George Mason University School of Law, listed some reasons why he thinks Cordray could be removed for cause: allegations of employee discrimination and retaliation at the CFPB, and a settlement with auto lender Ally Financial that some allege was a false claim.

Others see that as a stretch.

"I don't think there is anything that Director Cordray has done that would constitute cause," [co-blogger Public Citizen's Scott] Nelson said. "Cause doesn't mean you disagree with a person's policies; cause is considered to mean malfeasance."

* * *

"It's important for people who are fighting for consumers to clearly draw the lines that Trump has said he sides with regular Americans against special interests," said Paul Bland, the executive director at the public interest law firm Public Justice.

* * *

[As for the CFPB's pending motion for an en banc hearing in the PHH case, that case] could potentially be decided by 11 judges: four appointed by President Obama, four by former President George W. Bush and three by former President Bill Clinton.

* * *

."The banks are convinced Trump is totally in their pocket, but I think Trump has surprised many of us and is not as predictable a figure as George W. Bush," said Deepak Gupta, the founding principal of Gupta Wessler and a former CFPB senior litigation counsel. "I hold out optimism that legislation does not go through and there is a realistic path for the D.C. Circuit to act just in time for Cordray to leave just before his term expires in 2018."

Am. Banker: CFPB on Collision Course with Trump's Justice Department

Here.  Excerpt:

* * * Title X of the Dodd-Frank Act * * * gives the agency explicit authority to pursue its own litigation up to and including the Circuit Court level. But when it comes to the Supreme Court, the law says the CFPB must first file a written request to the U.S. Attorney General within a specified timeframe and that the "Attorney General concurs with such request or fails to take action within 60 days of the request."

But Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., Trump's pick for attorney general, could conceivably withhold such concurrence. That would mean the Trump administration effectively blocks the CFPB's decision to appeal to the Supreme Court.

This leaves CFPB with relatively few scenarios to prevail in the PHH v CFPB case. The agency has requested an en banc rehearing of the matter before all sitting justices on the D.C Circuit, and if either that request for rehearing is denied or is granted and the panel upholds the earlier ruling, the Justice Department could prevent the CFPB from appealing the case further. * * *

But if the CFPB prevails en banc, * * * presumably PHH would appeal to the Supreme Court * * * if the high court did grant cert and heard the case, Ohio State University law professor Peter Shane said, the court would likely assign an amicus defendant to stand in the government's place if it decides it does not want to defend its side of the case.

RICO suit filed by law firm against lawyers who regularly file class-action objections

The law firm Edelson PC has filed a RICO suit against a bunch of lawyers and law firms that regularly represent objectors to class-action settlements. The complaint, filed in federal district court in Chicago, is worth a look. Basically, it alleges that the defendant lawyers and law firms are using frivolous objections (and frivolous appeals from trial-court approvals of class-action settlements) to extort money that would otherwise go to deserving class members and their lawyers.

Looking for Clues About Trump on Consumer Protection? Trump's Transportation Sec'y Choice Served on Wells Board, Paid $1.2M While Wells Created Phony Accounts

Here, from CNN Money. 

Progressive Magazine Tackles Arbitration Clauses

Here. Excerpt:

On Monday, September 12, Fultz was summoned to a meeting with the human resources manager at her company, EGS Customer Care. She was given a form and told she needed to sign it. The form, titled “Agreement to Arbitrate,” bore the name of EGS’s parent company, Alorica. It pledged employees to resolve all workplace claims and disputes through arbitration and not “class action, collective action, and representative action procedures.” 

Fultz says she asked to see a lawyer and was denied. Instead, she was given thirty minutes to sign or else be deemed to have voluntarily resigned. What happened next highlights both the casual contempt companies like Alorica have for the rights of their workers and the extraordinary courage of Jennifer Fultz, who took a stand on principle rooted in her own family’s experience. * * *

* * * Jennifer Fultz * * * left work that day escorted by police, with a box of belongings the company had retrieved from her desk. She was fired and lost her health insurance. Her former employer initially fought her efforts to obtain unemployment benefits. She went from living paycheck to paycheck to struggling day by day.

(HT: Gregory Gauthier)

 

Michael Hiltzik on what he calls the Carrier "sham"

Here. An excerpt:

To begin with, rather than facing punishment from President Trump, Carrier will garner a $7-million state tax break from Indiana over 10 years to keep 730 jobs in town, with no guarantee the jobs will even last that long. That’s a minuscule benefit for a company with a profit of $7.6 billion on sales of $56 billion last year. It’s more telling that Carrier’s parent, United Technology, gets 10% of its revenue from U.S. government contracts, so it knows it pays to keep on the good side of an incoming president. Yet for all that, it seems that Trump got rooked by United Technologies. Even though the company is giving in on plans to move 730 jobs to Mexico — at least for now — it’s sticking to its plan to move 553 other Carrier union and management jobs south of the border. Nor is UT abandoning plans to shut down a plant manufacturing electronic controls in Huntington, Ind., just 100 miles from the Carrier factory, at the cost of another 700 jobs.

Watch this video on the safety, cyber-security, and privacy of self-driving (and partially self-driving) vehicles

Click here or on the embedded video below to watch Prof. Christopher Yoo and federal transportation policy journalist Stephanie Beasley discuss the safety, cyber-security, and privacy of self-driving and other automated vehicles. Though there are few completely self-driving cars on the road, many cars today have some autonomous features and so pose some of the same safety, cyber-security, and privacy challenges as the fully self-driving car of the future. 

 

Michigan Court of Appeals Again Protects Online Anonymity, Again Without Adopting Fully Protective Standard

by Paul Alan Levy

The Michigan Court of Appeals issued a decision today on the standards for deciding whether a plaintiff claiming to have been wronged by anonymous (or pseudonymous) online speech may compel the host of that speech to provide information that could aid the plaintiff in identifying the speaker so that process could be served and the case could move forward.  Previous decisions of the Michigan Court of Appeals have woven a complicated skein of cases, and those of us who advocate protections for online speech were hoping that the court hearing Sarkar v Doe, a case involving anonymous comments providing peer review of scientific research, might consolidate the cases around a single standard and move Michigan in the direction of the consensus Dendrite / Cahill standard that a dozen states have now adopted.  We got the former, but not yet the latter.  (Public Citizen submitted an amicus brief in the appeal).