In a case of first impression, the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan held that direct-to-voicemail messages qualify as a “call” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The Court’s opinion thus subjects another modern technology to the requirements of express consent and other strictures of the TCPA.
Defendant debt collector Dyck-O’Neal,
On July 31, 2018, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) announced its intent to accept applications for special purpose national bank charters from eligible non-depository financial technology (“Fintech”) companies.[1] This announcement coincides with the release of a Treasury Department report supporting financial innovation and the regulation of nonbank financial entities.[2]
With debts rising faster than new graduates’ starting salaries, a student debt crisis has the potential to haunt the nation much in the way the mortgage crisis did 10 years ago. In general, the roots of this problem lie, in part, in the private student loan, or PSL, market created by and in response to
The Federal Trade Commission announced in mid-July that it conducted the first compliance sweep of car dealerships since the effective date of its revised Used Car Rule requiring use of a new Buyers Guide sticker. The sweep took place between April and June 2018 in 20 cities nationwide. The FTC coordinated its efforts with
The Third Circuit recently applied the D.C. Circuit’s decision in ACA International v. FCC and granted summary judgment in favor of the defendant in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act claim. The Court held in Dominguez v. Yahoo, Inc. that Yahoo’s Email SMS Service was not an automatic telephone dialing system (or “ATDS”) because it
This past May, alums of a for-profit program run by the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges, Inc. won a stunning, albeit temporary and partial, victory against the Department of Education: the grant of their motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction by a magistrate judge sitting on the United States District Court for
President Donald Trump announced this morning that he plans to nominate Kathy Kraninger, associate director of the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”), to become the new director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”), replacing Mick Mulvaney.
The announcement came as a surprise to many because Kraninger’s name was not among those that had
In mid-May 2018, per multiple reports, John Michael “Mick” Mulvaney, the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, announced plans to fold the CFPB’s Office of Students and Young Consumers into its preexisting Office of Financial Education, itself a part of this agency’s Consumer Education and Engagement Division. During this reorganization, the
On May 31, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a $150,000 sanctions award against three consumer attorneys and their law firms for bad faith conduct and misrepresentations.
The opinion reads like a detective story and lays out, in the Court’s own words, “a mosaic of half-truths, inconsistencies, mischaracterizations, exaggerations, omissions, evasions, and failures to
On Wednesday, May 23, from 3 – 4 pm ET, Troutman Sanders attorneys, Alan Wingfield, Wendy Sugg, and Meagan Mihalko presented a webinar discussing employment-purpose background screening laws. The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act imposes technical paperwork requirements on employers desiring to obtain background screenings, and many millions of dollars have been paid in individual