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Consumer Law

CL&P Blog

The contributors to this blog are a diverse group of lawyers and law professors who practice, teach, or write about consumer law and policy. Although the blog is hosted by Public Citizen's Consumer Justice Project, the views expressed here are solely those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions with which they are affiliated.

Post Frequency: 15.1/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 11:13:04

Did Some ISP's Give in Too Easily to Dozier's Threats of Suit over Their Customer's Speech?

Posted on October 03, 2008
by Paul Alan Levy Yesterday I commented on the efforts of John W. Dozier, Jr. to use spurious claims of trademark infringement to get a ?sucks? site, www.cybertriallawyer-sucks.com, taken down, focusing on the trademark claim itself. That claim will, ultimately,...

Another Case of Abusive Trademark Claims to Suppress Speech ? John Dozier redux

Posted on October 02, 2008
by Paul Alan Levy A few weeks ago, I nominated the law mega-firm Jones Day for an award for the most abusive trademark claim brought to suppress speech they don?t like. Today?s post concerns another abusive trademark claim that might...

Mortgage Crisis Scholarship

Posted on October 02, 2008
The mortgage crisis is rightfully drawing the attention of scholars. Here are links to a few papers on SSRN: My St. John's colleague, Vincent DiLorenzo, is working on "Mortgage Market Deregulation and Equity Stripping Under Sanction of Law." The abstract...

Stabilize Home Mortgage Borrowers with Eminent Domain

Posted on September 29, 2008
By Lauren E. Willis [reprinted here with permission] Edward Leamer?s ?trickle up? economic plan is a good start, but if a downward spiral is a serious possibility in the economy right now, we need not a trickle but a flood....

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Query About the Bailout Mechanism

Posted on September 29, 2008
Now that the House has rejected the bailout proposal in its present incarnation (see here), perhaps those who know more about this subject than I do can help me understand something: if the problem is with the freezing of credit,...

Homeowners and the Bailout

Posted on September 29, 2008
By Alan White For homeowners as well as for banks, the bailout deal announced today could be a turning point, or it could be more of the same, depending on what Treasury actually does with its enormous new powers. Treasury...

Times Article on Impact of Bailout on Distressed Homeowners

Posted on September 29, 2008
Amid the welter of articles on the bailout proposal is this one in today's Times on the impact of the bill on homeowners: "A Bill Encouraging to Distressed Homeowners, but Its Reach is Unclear." An excerpt:The legislation does take steps...

Supreme Court Term Begins Soon - Sign Up For Supreme Court Watch List Now

Posted on September 29, 2008
by Brian Wolfman Today, Monday, September 29, the Supreme Court Justices held their annual "long conference" at which they considered hundreds of petitions for writs of certiorari that had piled up over the Court's 3-month summer recess. If the Court's...

Another idea

Posted on September 27, 2008
By Alan White Instead of buying mortgage-backed securities from banks, Treasury could buy the mortgages themselves from the servicers of mortgage-backed securities at a discount via a reverse auction. As written, I believe the Paulson plan would actually permit this...

Moral Hazard and the Bailout: A One-Minute Play

Posted on September 26, 2008
Time: Five years or so in the future. Setting: Exterior of a dilapidated home. DRACO rings the home's doorbell.Jorkins: Hello? Draco: Good morning. I couldn't help but notice that the siding on your home looks, well, it looks as if...

Fannie and Freddie too big?

Posted on September 24, 2008
By Alan White Die-hard free market advocates are responding to the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by calling for them to be gradually shrunk out of existence, to unleash the private market to meet our housing finance needs....

Jones Day Opposes Trademark Amicus Brief -- What Is It Afraid Of?

Posted on September 24, 2008
by Paul Alan Levy Twelve days ago, I posted comments here about a Jones Day lawsuit claiming that its trademark is infringed and diluted by mention of its name in headlines of articles on the BlockShopper web site, www.blockshopper.com, and...

Construction Arbitration Services? Arbitrator Allegedly Destroys Evidence, Faces Motion for Contempt

Posted on September 23, 2008
By Matt Melamed and Paul Bland Among consumer advocates, advocates for home buyers and home owners, and lawyers who represent consumers, Construction Arbitration Services ("CAS") is notorious for being cozy with the home construction industry and for often ruling for...

House Passes Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights

Posted on September 23, 2008
Gov.track.us is reporting that the House passed the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights, 312-112. You can see the roll call vote here.

Consumer Groups Win Suit Over Used Vehicle Database

Posted on September 23, 2008
Last February, we blogged about a suit filed by Public Citizen, Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, and Consumer Action against the Department of Justice over its 15-year unlawful delay in establishing a used vehicle database. The purpose of the...

Blaming the CRA

Posted on September 23, 2008
By Alan White The financial crisis is now being attributed by the Wall Street Journal editors and other right wingers to the Community Reinvestment Act. The CRA requires banks to provide loans and financial services in underserved communities, particularly poor...

American (Defense) Bar Association

Posted on September 21, 2008
I am an ABA member. While not the same as saying, ?I am Spartacus,? it does carry with it the potential for the scorn of many plaintiff lawyers, who see the ABA as a treehouse for the defense bar that...

It?s all about the Mortgages

Posted on September 21, 2008
By Alan White Secretary Paulson is trying to solve the freeze-up of the credit markets by buying up the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that banks are holding and cannot value. Because nobody seems to know whether MBS are worth 10 cents...

How About a Little Debate on the Massive Bank Bailout?

Posted on September 21, 2008
by Brian Wolfman Remember the last time government policy was made in the interest of the nation with barely a peep of mainstream protest, as the press went along for the ride? Think early 2003. Yesterday, Alan White on these...

Paulson's Breathtaking Power Grab

Posted on September 20, 2008
By Alan White The New York Times has posted a draft of the bill Treasury Secretary Paulson wants Congress to pass next week, handing over the Constitutional appropriation power to him, to the tune of $700 billion. The bill would...

Bush Administration Seeks Bailout of U.S. Financial Markets

Posted on September 20, 2008
by Brian Wolfman The Washington Post strikes again, with more than a dozen articles today on the U.S. financial crisis and the Bush Administration's non-laissez faire approach to fixing it. To give you a flavor, the lead article, entitled "Historic...

Public Citizen and EFF file amicus brief opposing Jones Day trademark strike suit

Posted on September 19, 2008
by Paul Alan Levy In a previous post, I discussed abusive trademark claims put forward by Jones Day seeking to suppress speech on the BlockShopper web site about two of its associates that it did not like. Defendants? motion to...

Times Article Which Raises Questions About Responsibility for Loan Losses

Posted on September 19, 2008
As bailouts proliferate, today's Times has a particularly interesting article on the impact of the mortgage crisis on one family: "Coming Up Short: The Pain of Selling a Home for Less Than the Loan." Mike and Linda Kelly of Central...

More Bushvilles

Posted on September 19, 2008
The Associated Press issued a new story yesterday on tent cities full of homeless people in Reno and elsewhere.

RTC or HOLC revisited?

Posted on September 18, 2008
Some time ago I blogged about proposals to bring back something like the Homeowners Loan Corporation from the 1930's, to buy bad mortgages from banks and restructure them. It seems this idea is catching on. Today's stock market rose on...

Banks in Denial

Posted on September 18, 2008
By Alan White At a Congressional hearing yesterday the major banks that now control most of the mortgage servicing in the U.S. made it clear that they are very unlikely to write down the mortgage balances of homeowners facing foreclosure....

Corey Ciocchetti on E-Commerce and Information Privacy

Posted on September 17, 2008
Corey Ciocchetti has written "E-Commerce and Information Privacy: Privacy Policies as Personal Information Protectors," 44 American Business L.J. --. Here's the abstract:This article dives into the contemporary debate surrounding information privacy in the twenty-first century e-commerce environment through the lens...

Federal Bailout of Insurance Giant AIG

Posted on September 16, 2008
The Wall Street Journal reports here on the U.S. government's $85 billion bail out of insurance giant AIG.

Lehman Brothers's Bankruptcy Petition

Posted on September 16, 2008
For all you nerds out there, here's Lehman Brothers's bankruptcy petition. Thanks to Credit Slips!

Read All About the Financial Meltdown

Posted on September 15, 2008
It's fashionable to skewer the "main stream media." But that's where I'm finding some of the best day-to-day coverage of the credit crisis, the mortgage meltdown, etc. Highlighted by Lehman Brothers's bankruptcy filing, today's Washington Post has a series of...

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