Consumer Law & Policy Blog

Klonoff: A Respite from the Decline in Class Actions

Robert H. Klonoff of Lewis & Clark has written Class Actions Part II: A Respite from the Decline.  Here is the abstract:

In a 2013 article, I explained that the Supreme Court and federal circuits had cut back significantly on plaintiffs' ability to bring class actions. As I explain in the present article, that trend has subsided. First, the Supreme Court has denied certiorari in several high profile cases. Second, the Court's most recent class action rulings have been narrow and fact specific. Third, the federal circuits have likewise adopted narrow and fact specific approaches to class actions. One explanation for this new trend is that defendants have been overly aggressive in their arguments, losing credibility and causing courts to push back.

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)

 

Will the CFPB Issue the Arbitration Rule Soon?

That's one of the questions addressed by the Wall Street Journal in an article headlined Financial Regulators Scramble to Complete Postcrisis Rules. (behind paywall). Excerpt:

“This type of ’midnight rulemaking’ is neither conducive to sound policy nor consistent with principles of democratic accountability,” Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told SEC Chairman Mary Jo White at a Nov. 15 hearing.

* * *

Regulators deny they are rushing to finish initiatives ahead of the transfer of power and say they are merely working through their normal process to finish rules that were targeted for completion this year.

* * *

After rules are published, it can be time-consuming for future administrations to try to unravel them. They have to follow the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires an extensive public-comment process, and changes may be subject to legal challenge. Republican lawmakers are now talking about dusting off the little-used Congressional Review Act, which would allow them to try to uproot any regulation completed after May 2016 if they can get a majority vote in each chamber on the question before mid-2017.

At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray, the agency’s director, has instructed staff to continue moving ahead with rulemaking at its current rapid pace,according to people familiar with the situation. That means the CFPB will try to complete its major pending rules, particularly the proposal to restrict arbitration clauses in consumer financial contracts.

* * *

[T]he CFPB may run out of time to complete rules designed to rein in the high interest, small-dollar payday lenders that cater to about 12 million Americans.

 

AAJ: Forced Arbitration: How Corporations Use the Fine Print to Bully Americans

Here.  And here is the abstract:

Though few realize it, forced arbitration clauses are endemic in today’s marketplace — hidden in credit card agreements, bank accounts, corporate social media pages, even Starbucks gift cards. More than half a billion arbitration provisions infiltrate our everyday lives. Despite their prevalence, few consumers are aware of the forced arbitration clauses they are bound to, and fewer still realize they have been stripped of their constitutional rights.

Consumer Clinical Law Professors Comment on CFPB's Arbitration Rule

by Jeff Sovern

I meant to post this a long time ago, but then I got caught up teaching an intensive class, followed by an overload and didn't get to it. Anyway, here is a comment on the CFPB's proposed arbitration rule posted by law professors teaching consumer law clinics (we had previously covered a law professor letter that included doctrinal professors).  The letter reports on the experiences of the clinical professors representing clients and how arbitration clauses interfered with their attempts to obtain justice. Two examples of what they say, but they give others:

One of our clinics represented a Hispanic woman who was solicited at her home by a sales representative of a utility-finance company. The sales representative told her she could get utility service for a reduced rate because of her age and her disability. The conversation occurred entirely in Spanish because she does not speak English. The salesman stated he was from the local power company, which was not true. The consumer signed a utility-finance contract – which was entirely in English, in violation of state law – that cost her significantly more every month. The consumer, as is often the case, was upset and ashamed that she had somehow fallen for this bait-and-switch, and then outraged when she learned that many of her neighbors also had fallen victim. She wants to bring a class action on behalf of herself and her neighbors to get out of a contract she did not understand (and could not have understood) and to make sure that the company does not take advantage of other people in her situation. But the contract contains an arbitration clause banning class actions and class arbitrations. Even if her individual case goes forward, the deceptive and abusive practices likely will continue and more vulnerable consumers will become victims every day.

* * *

One of our clients is a single father living in California who immigrated to the United States. His dream is to become a nurse. He heard about a nursing program that he could complete and called to find out more. The salesperson told him that he could earn a nursing degree online that would qualify him for a nursing license in California and that he could transfer his educational credits from abroad to help fulfill the prerequisites for a nursing degree. He took out a private student loan from a credit union chosen by the online school and signed all of the paperwork for the loan and the program at the same time. He later learned that his credits were not eligible for transfer and that he the online degree would not allow him to obtain a nursing license. He ended up paying over $7,000 and spending countless hours taking classes online that did not actually lead to a degree, leaving him with a debt to the credit union for his private loan. Only after contacting our program for help did he realize that his contract with the school included a mandatory arbitration clause. The online school’s mandatory arbitration including the following blatantly unfair provisions: the arbitration must take place in Indiana, the school gets to choose the arbitrator, the client cannot have an attorney, and the client must pay $250 for the arbitration (much more than small claims court), and that the client must compensate TNC for attorney’s fees and costs if it prevails. This arbitration clause presents a significant obstacle to the client getting any kind of relief after being victimized by a scam.

Richard Marcus Article: Optimism about Class Actions in the 21st Century

Richard Marcus of Hastings has written Bending in the Breeze: American Class Actions in the Twenty-First Century, 65 DePaul Law Review (2016). Here's the abstract::

It is always better to have the breeze at your back, but that surely has not recently been the case for class action proponents. At the risk of overstating, there is a certain fin de siecle flavor to current procedural discussions, at least among academics; it seems that several foundational principles of late twentieth century procedural ordering have come under attack in the twenty-first century. Although not alone among those principles, class actions have a prominent role. Dean Robert Klonoff has recently written of "The Decline of Class Actions," and Professor Linda Mullenix has written of "Ending Class Actions as We Know Them." Professor Arthur Miller-who was present at the creation of the modern class action-has suggested that we face "the death of aggregate litigation by a thousand paper cuts." But he, at least, sees some "rays of light that indicate it will survive." It is likely an overstatement to claim that any of these prominent academics foresees the imminent demise of American class actions. But as we shall see, lawyers sometimes view things in more apocalyptic terms. At the same time, most or all would probably agree with Judge Boyle about the increasing headwinds that plaintiffs face.

Without questioning in the least the idea that proponents of the class action have suffered some reverses recently, I intend to argue that Professor Miller's optimism about American aggregate litigation is justified. Like Confucius' green reed, the class action is likely to bend in the breeze and survive the current, cold climate. In significant part, this attitude stems from an appreciation of the exceptional character of American class actions in particular and the American bench and bar in general. As Professor Christopher Hodges of Oxford began his study of European techniques for affording relief in court to groups, lawmakers in Europe sought to avoid "a US-style court-based mechanism." And Canadian Professor Janet Walker introduced an international panel on group litigation in Moscow by noting that "everyone, at least outside the United States, seems also to agree that they do not want to adopt U.S.-style class actions in their legal systems."

Against this background, it does not seem that American aggregate litigation in general, and class actions in particular, are in danger of extinction. Indeed, one book published in 2014 on European group litigation worries in its title whether they-compared to American aggregate litigation-are "squeaking mice," and Dean Klonoff has recently explained why most nations do not have U.S.-style class actions."

What I Learned From Listening to Wells Fargo's CEO Stumpf Testify (and to Senator Warren's and Brown's Questions)

by Jeff Sovern

As we noted yesterday, on Tuesday, Wells Fargo CEO John G. Stumpf testified before the Senate Banking Committee about the Wells Fargo Customer Fraud Fiasco.  Video is available here and Senator Elizabeth Warren's two rounds of questioning, by themselves, here. I have now listened to Mr. Stumpf's testimony, and I learned that Wells engaged in cross-selling to "deepen" its relationships with its customers.  I am somewhat embarrassed to acknowledge that I don't know what a deep relationship means to a bank (If you will forgive a personal note, I have banked at the same institution for nearly forty years, and I currently have four accounts there--and yet I don't know if our relationship counts as deep or not.  I would be surprised, though, if anyone at the bank knows my name, or could recognize me).  But I got a different perspective on why Wells pursued cross-selling so aggressively from Senator Warren's interrogation, during which she observed that in quarterly phone calls with stock analysts, Mr. Stumpf had repeatedly touted the number of accounts its average customer had, a number that increased over time.  Wells apparently led other banks in that number.  Senator Warren also reported that Wells' stock price increased during that same period, yielding Mr. Stumpf personally a profit in the hundreds of millions, if I understood correctly (though presumably the stock price also rose because of other activities as well).

Mr. Stumpf, to his credit, took responsibility for the fiasco and also promised to make things right.  But he said little about what making things right means. For example, when senators asked about Wells customers who might have had their credit scores reduced because of the phony accounts (e.g., if Wells employees requested credit reports as part of the process of opening a credit card account a consumer had not requested) which might have resulted in consumers paying higher interest rates on mortgages they later applied for, say, Mr. Stumpf was unable to say more about what would be done in such cases beyond making it right.   I would have expected that Wells would be prepared to say what would make things right by now.  After all, this matter became public in 2013, when the Los Angeles Times reported on it, and the CFPB, OCC, and Los Angeles City Attorney have been investigating for some time, an investigation that culminated in the largest penalty in CFPB history.  But Mr. Stumpf didn't know the answer to that question.

Regular readers will recall that I hoped that a senator would ask whether Wells will waive its arbitration clauses in defending civil law suits arising from the matter.  In fact, Senator Sherrod Brown asked just that--but all I learned from the answer is that Mr. Stumpf is not an attorney. He didn't know the answer to that question either. But maybe the answer has come from the cross-selling cases already brought in which Wells did not waive its arbitration clause. Sigh.

Did Arbitration Clauses Help Wells Fargo Get Away With Account Opening Frauds for Years?

That's a point made in an op-ed in The Hill, Why Wells Fargo Got Away with It So Long by Public Citizen's Robert Weissman and AFR's Lisa Donner.  The whole piece is worth reading, but here's an excerpt:

[M]ore than three years ago, a Wells Fargo customer named David Douglas sued in California, contending that the bank's employees and branch managers "routinely use the account information, date of birth, and Social Security and taxpayer identification numbers ... and existing bank customers' money to open additional accounts." Douglas alleged that branch managers opened at least eight accounts in his name and created fake business accounts under his name without his knowledge.

This case should have gone to court but was blocked by a ripoff clause. Douglas's lawyers argued that an arbitration provision in a legitimate account agreement should not bar him from suing over a sham account he never agreed to open. However, citing recent 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the judge held that the ripoff clause in the original agreement blocked him from suing Wells Fargo.

In 2015, another Wells Fargo customer, Shahriar Jabbari, tried to file a class action against the bank, claiming that employees hid fees, refused to close accounts on request, and forged signatures and addresses. Wells Fargo publicly denied these allegations. Again, the judge ruled that the ripoff clause in the original account agreement forced any unresolved disagreement into arbitration, and Jabbari's class action was kicked out of court.

103 Members of Congress Endorse CFPB's Arbitration Rule

by Jeff Sovern

The Senate letter, signed by more than a third of the Senators, is here, and the House letter with 65 signers, is here.  The letters are more than pro forma expressions of support. They are extensively footnoted (and the House letter cites the law professor letter joined by more than 200 professors). Some excerpts from the Senate letter (with footnotes omitted):

The CFPB's study and proposal underscore the importance of class actions as a powerful tool to help consumers effectively vindicate their rights by returning billions of dollars to millions of consumers, in addition to achieving important non-monetary relief in the form of changes to harmful business practices. Because the majority of individual claims against consumer financial services companies are worth only small amounts of money, as Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals once put it, "the realistic alternative to a class action is not 17 million individual suits, but zero individual suits, as only a lunatic or a fanatic sues for $30."The CFPB's data confirms this: although millions of financial consumers are covered by forced arbitration clauses and class action waivers, the CFPB found that only a few hundred consumers file arbitration claims each year and that very few file individual claims in court, particularly when compared to the 32 million consumers who benefit from class actions each year. 

Hnylka Article on Rule 68 and Mooting Class Actions

Joseph M Hnylka of Nova Southeastern has written Continuing to Litigate after You Have Won: Courts Defy Article III to Avoid Mooting TCPA Class Actions, Despite Defendants’ Rule 68 Offers of Complete Relief, 64 Drake Law Review (2016).  Here's the abstract:

Every day, thousands of ordinary Americans receive unwelcome faxes, text messages, and prerecorded telephone calls (frequently referred to as “robocalls”). The proliferation of these unwelcome messages has increased at an astronomical rate. In 2015, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported that it received approximately 150,000 complaints each month. This dramatic increase occurred despite Congress’s enactment of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in 1991, which was meant to restrict dramatically such unwelcome calls, texts, and faxes, and to protect the privacy interests of consumers. Because the recovery under the TCPA is limited to $500 per violation, many consumer suits under the TCPA are filed as class actions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. The Rule 23 class action mechanism appears to be tailored to such small regulatory actions. However, defense counsel, confronted by the increasing number of class actions filed against their clients, searched for an effective response to fend off these class actions aggressively and advocate for their clients. Defense counsels’ “weapon of choice” appears to be Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68. Rule 68 permits defense counsel to serve an offer of judgment on the opposing party. The rule is a procedural one, intended to encourage settlement and avoid litigation. The rule achieves these goals by shifting costs: “If the judgment that the offeree finally obtains is not more favorable than the unaccepted offer, the offeree must pay costs incurred after the offer was made.” One thing not addressed by the language of Rule 68 is the effect, if any, of an unaccepted offer on the justiciability of the plaintiff’s claim under the Constitution’s Case or Controversy Clause. In TCPA class actions, one strategy used by defense counsel to fend off suits has been to make a Rule 68 offer of judgment to the named class representative for the statutory maximum that a plaintiff could recover on his individual claim, prior to plaintiff’s filing of a motion for class certification, in order to moot the named representative’s individual claim and the entire class action. In other words, defense counsels’ position is that when the named plaintiff is offered all that he could possibly receive from suit and has not yet moved to certify a class, there is no longer a case or controversy under Article III, and the case is moot. In Gomez v. Campbell-Ewald Co., the Supreme Court attempted to resolve a Circuit Court split as to whether a Rule 68 offer of judgment, made before a plaintiff moves to certify the class, moots the named plaintiff’s claim and the entire class action. However, rather than resolving the split, the Court’s opinion only provided a temporary solution, and the Court postponed a definitive resolution of the matter for another day. The Gomez majority noted: “[w]e need not, and do not, now decide whether the result would be different if a defendant deposits the full amount of the plaintiff’s individual claim in an account payable to the plaintiff, and the court then enters judgment for the plaintiff in that amount.” This Article takes the position that both Article III and the Supreme Court’s precedent compel the conclusion that a defendant’s Rule 68 offer of complete relief, when made before the plaintiff moves for class certification, moots not only the plaintiff’s individual claim, but also the entire action. The article maintains a contrary conclusion would run afoul of Article III and undermine the “personal stake” requirement set forth in the Supreme Court’s Article III jurisprudence. Because this Article was in final production at the time the Supreme Court issued its recent decision in Gomez, the Court’s decision is addressed in the Author’s Addendum, provided at the end of the Article.