Consumer Law & Policy Blog

Bankruptcy Credit Counseling Roundtable

by Jeff Sovern

      On June 1, I attended a terrific policy roundtable on the credit counseling required by the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, at Fordham Law School, put on by the Fordham Corporate Law Center and Susan Block-Lieb of Fordham.  Because I knew so little about the subject, not being a bankruptcy person, I remained silent, and have been feeling guilty ever since.  That's because there's an unstated expectation at these events that you'll pay back the other contributors from whom you learn by contributing yourself-and I learned quite a bit.  But one of the virtues of a blog is that you can expiate your guilt to some extent by commenting later (blogging as therapy).   Things stated at the roundtable were off the record, but I can report on materials in the public record and my own views, now that I've had some time to figure out what they are.

        The credit counseling industry has existed for some forty years and has had a checkered history.  While some studies have found credit counseling has had beneficial results, see Abdighani Hirad & Peter M. Zorn, A Little Knowledge is a Good Thing: Empirical Evidence of the Effectiveness of Pre-Purchase Homeownership Counseling 2 (2001) ("counseling can be effective in reducing mortgage delinquency . . . . borrowers receiving counseling through individual programs experience a 34 percent reduction in delinquency rates."); Gregory Elliehausen, E. Christopher Lundquist & Michael E. Staten, The Impact of Credit Counseling on Subsequent Borrower Credit Usage and Payment Behavior 31 ("one-on-one credit counseling has a positive impact on borrower behavior over an extended period."), counseling agencies have also been the subject of a many consumer complaints and FTC enforcement actions. 

Upcoming Conference: "Taming The Giant Corporation"

   

From June 8 to 10, in Washington, D.C., the Center for the Study of Responsive Law is sponsoring a conference entitled "Taming the Giant Corporation: A National Conference on Corporate Accountability."  The conference's home page contains an excellent synopsis of the purpose of the conference and what its planners hope to accomplish.  The agenda for the conference is here. 

 

Call for Papers

We've received the following call for papers:

This concerns professors, researchers, students, lawyers, jurists, heads of consumer associations, administrators of public bodies in charge of consumer protection, and policymakers in regional and international institutions.

The Groupe de Recherche en Droit International et Comparé de la Consommation (Gredicc or Research Group in International and Comparative Consumer Law), from the Law Departement of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and the Euro-american Research Chair on Consumer Protection created by the University of Cantabria (Santander, Spain) are planning an international conference on the following topic: The status of consumer protection policy in regional economically integrated systems in the Americas and Europe.

Dee Pridgen's Report on the ABA Antitrust Section Consumer Protection Conference

My co-author, Dee Pridgen, Associate Dean and Professor of Law at Wyoming and author of the treatises Consumer Protection and the Law and Consumer Credit and the Law, attended the recent ABA Antitrust Section Consumer Protection Conference and kindly provided the following illuminating report:

I attended what was called the “inaugural stand-alone consumer protection conference” put on by the ABA Antitrust Section at Georgetown Law Center on January 29-30, 2007.  The focus was on FTC consumer protection enforcement and industry self regulation, with a smattering of state consumer protection enforcement thrown in. There was little or no discussion of private suits.  All five sitting FTC Commissioners, as well as the current and four former Bureau of Consumer Protection directors made appearances.  There was also good representation from the private sector, including firms and in-house counsel.  Two speakers from state attorneys general offices and two academics also spoke.  Thus, this conference was a good complement to the NCLC annual conference and the Teaching Consumer Law conference held biennially in Houston.

What I gleaned from the various speakers was that the FTC appears to be revitalized in the consumer protection area, with an emphasis on consumer privacy (including data security), consumer technology (spyware and adware), health and obesity issues, and international and criminal enforcement.  Several FTC speakers mentioned the recently passed US SAFE WEB Act [which we blogged about earlier here] as a major step forward in assisting the FTC in its overseas law enforcement efforts.

Upcoming Consumer Law Conference

The ABA Antitrust Law Section will present a Consumer Protection Conference on January 29-30, 2007 at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC.  Of particular interest to those interested in consumer law may be programs on privacy and information security, advertising to children, and deception.  Speakers include current and former FTC Commissioners, state officials, lawyers in private practice and from public interest organizations, and professors. More information is available here.

Programming Note & Miami Recap

by Deepak Gupta

With most of the blog's contributors at the National Consumer Law Center conference in Miami over the past few days, posting activity around here has been a little sparse.  The good news, though, is that the conference was abuzz with lots of fascinating ideas, tips, and insights and we plan to make up the deficit by expanding upon and sharing some of them here.  NCLC, along with the National Association of Consumer Advocates, deserves enormous credit for creating and sustaining the national community of private lawyers, public interest organizations, legal services lawyers, and activists who advocate on behalf of consumers, and NCLC's excellent annual conferences are a huge part of that effort.  It's hard to overstate their importance.

The blog's contributors alone discussed a wide array of topics, including teaching consumer law (Chris Peterson, Jeff Sovern, Richard Alderman); lobbying on consumer legislative policy in Washington (Ira Rheingold); a report on the arbitration wars and strategic thinking about arbitration (Paul Bland); "check diversion" debt collection schemes (Deepak Gupta); and litigating consumer cases in the U.S. Supreme Court (Brian Wolfman, Paul Bland).   As Chris has already mentioned, Paul Bland was honored with the NCLC's most prestigious award and gave a truly inspiring acceptance speech.  In addition, CL&P bloggers gave presentations at the class action symposium on Sunday.  Brian Wolfman delivered a lunch address on the due process right to opt out--discussing ideas described in this prior blog post--and there were panels on the arbitration of consumer class actions (Mike Quirk, Paul Bland), and the role of trial plans in class actions (Cary Flitter, Stephen Gardner), among others.   On the latter topic, apparently nobody really knows what a trial plan is, except that some courts have insisted on them as a precondition for class certification.  To make matters worse, some courts have rejected plans as too cursory while others have rejected plans that were too complex.  This leads one to wonder whether the requirement is nothing more than a pretext to deny certification where it would otherwise be justified. 

Finally, on a slightly random note, here are two very intriguing questions that came up this weekend:

• Can the consumer movement be expanded (and its legislative agenda strengthened) by bringing in evangelicals and the "religious right"--people who presumably believe that the law should reflect the Biblical prohibitions on usury, but who are not necessarily positively disposed to the language of consumer rights?  Perhaps the answer lies in shifting the focus from rights-talk to the language of morality, responsibility, and obligation.  See Paul B. Rasor, Biblical Roots of Modern Consumer Protection Law, 10 Journal of Law & Religion (1993).

• Can the evil of mandatory binding arbitration be attacked, indirectly, by bringing successful consumer class actions in arbitral fora?   Do arbitrators, because of the way they are compensated, actually have an incentive to certify consumer classes?  And if so, what are the due process implications of an arbitral award in a class arbitration?   How can an arbitral award bind absent class members and what about injunctive relief?  To what extent can court confirmation cure any problems that might arise?   (We hope to bring you a discussion of at least some of these questions in the coming days.)

See you in Miami...

  Many, if not most, of the contributors to this blog -- including myself, Brian Wolfman, Paul Bland, Jon Sheldon, Ira Rheingold, and Chris Peterson -- will be speaking at the National Consumer Law Center's 15th Annual Consumer Rights Litigation Conference in Miami this weekend.  The NCLC runs a fantastic and inspiring conference.   Among many other things, the agenda includes a smorgasbord of substantive panels; a sneak-peak of the new documentary on the credit card industry, Maxed Out; and a separate symposium on class actions.  We hope to see you there!

Latest on NCLC's Miami Consumer Rights Litigation Conference

by Jon Sheldon

This year's NCLC Consumer Rights Litigation Conference is being held in Miami November 9-13. Here is the latest:

1. Over 660 people have already registered and the number is likely to exceed 700 by next week.

2. There is so much interest in this year's conference that room blocks have filled up at the Hyatt Regency (where the conference is being held), the Courtyard Marriott, and the Radisson Miami.  NCLC has arranged a group rate with the Marriott Biscayne Bay Hotel & Marina (1-800-228-9290) and the Doubletree Grand Hotel Biscayne Bay (1-800-222-8733). In order to receive the negotiated group rate of $169 per night, individual attendees must ask for the group block by name: National Consumer Law Center.  Both hotels are a short ride from the Hyatt Regency by Metromover, a free people-mover system that serves downtown Miami.

3.  The Friday (Nov. 9) intensive on Mortgage Servicing is already sold out, but there is still space available for the all-day Friday intensives on  Auto Sales and Financing Fraud and also Doing Well While Doing Good: Secrets to Running a Profitable Consumer Law Practice. 

4. Also Friday at 11:30 AM the main conference starts with over 10  roundtables and other special sessions. The main conference gets into high gear Saturday and Sunday with over 30 sessions to choose from on those days. This year's advance registration shows strong interest in predatory lending, foreclosures, arbitration, debt collection, and trial practice sessions, with fair credit reporting and auto topics not far behind. But there are many other options too--everything from electronic payments to reverse mortgages to ethical issues in class action settlements.

5. Monday  (Nov. 12)  there is still space available for two well-received intensives:  The Class Action Symposium and Beyond Bankruptcy Reform: Getting Mortgage Servicers on Track in Chapter 13, and Bankruptcy Reform Update.

6. We cannot list all the special meetings and events that are happening at the conference that weekend, but highlights are the NACA Media and Trial Advocacy Awards and the NACA annual meeting, the Carnival de Abogados, a special showing of MAXED OUT (pre-release of an amazing new movie on debt), and various special luncheons and receptions.

7. You can register in person at the conference registration table at the Hyatt Regency or go to http://www.consumerlaw.org.  All registrants are required to sign a certification relating to their representation of consumer rather than business interests.

Wal-Mart Symposium Recap

by Orly Lobel

Last weekend I participated in an excellent symposium organized by the University of Connecticut Law Review: "Wal-Mart Matters". The symposium was intense, a day and a half of full panels with speakers from the legal academy, from other disciplines, including history, economics, business, and from practice, including journalists, activists, and both the plaintiff’s and the defendant’s lawyers from the biggest employment discrimination class action to ever been certified – 1.6. million women working at Wal-Mart - currently on appeal before the 9th Circuit: Dukes vs. Wal-Mart.

I plan to post later a synopsis of my own talk called Wal-Mart’s Benefits: The Targeting of Giants in a National Campaign to Improve Work Conditions. But in the meantime, I thought I would share a few notable quotes from some of the panels, to give you a sense of the debates:

Bob Ortega, Author of In Sam We Trust: The Untold Story of Sam Walton and Wal-Mart, the World's Most Powerful Retailer, Journalist, and Journalism Professor: “You can put lipstick and string pearls on a pig, but the pig remains a pig” (on Wal-Mart’s PR attempts to improve its image by hiring civil rights spokesmen).

Vijay Prashad, Professor of International Studies: “They had Saliva on their faces, when they learned the statistic that India’s middle class is the size of  France” (about management contemplating entering the Indian retail market).

Joseph M. Sellers, Partner, Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld, & Toll, PLLC, representing the plaintiffs in the Dukes discrimination class action "(Wal-Mart management had a fetish of controlling every single aspect of Wal-Mart stores, from to music, but they forgot to guide promotion and personnel decisions at the floor level".

Upcoming Consumer Issues Conference

by Jeff Sovern

On September 28, the University of Wyoming will conduct its Consumer Issues Conference, which will focus on consumer housing issues.  Allen Fishbein of the Consumer Federation of America is one of the keynote speakers while Dee Pridgen (author of the treatises Consumer Protection and the Law and Consumer Credit and the Law, and my co-author on the forthcoming third edition of the Thomson/West casebook, Consumer Law Cases and Materials (with Ralph Rohner and John Spanogle)) will speak on predatory lending.  For more information, visit the Conference web site.