As the student loan total keeps climbing and Congress keeps debating what to do, advice from all corners keeps bombarding the nation’s desperate borrowers. Some tout the use of crowdfunding via sites like GoFundMe and Zero Bound; others encourage borrowers to leverage rebate programs; and in some cases, cryptocurrencies have been hyped
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 March 31, 2018 the United States crossed a milestone. As of that date, Americans’ student loan debt topped $1.5 trillion, exceeding the share of consumer debt held by auto loans ($1.1 trillion) and credit cards ($988 billion), and jumping by more than $521 billion in roughly six years.
A report released in May
As disclosed in a notification filed on May 3, in FMS Investment Corp. v. United States (“the Notice”), the Department of Education (“DOE”) will soon stop using private debt collectors to handle overdue student loan payments.
In this post-award bid protest filed on February 9, 2018, in the United States
Even before it succeeded in finally quashing a civil investigative demand (“CID”) issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on April 21, 2017, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (“ACICS”) notched a second victory against a federal adversary in April 2018.
Background
Established in 1912, upon the request of Benjamin Franklin Williams, President
Founded in 1931 by Herman A. DeVry, the inventor of the first portable motion picture projector and early government training film producer, DeVry Education Group (“DeVry”) began as DeForest Training School. Having been renamed “DeVry Technical Institute” in 1953 and gained accreditation to confer associate degrees in electronics in 1957,
On May 2, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey granted a debt collector’s motion to dismiss a putative class action brought under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, holding the validation notice in the collection letter was not overshadowed or contradicted by other language in the letter.
The case is Reizner
In Echlin v. PeaceHealth, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a debt collection agency meaningfully participated in collection efforts even if it did not have authority to settle the account, did not receive payments, and was not involved in collection beyond sending two collection letters. Accordingly, the collection agency
In a short, straightforward opinion, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals joined its sister circuits that have applied a materiality standard to consumer claims of falsity and deception under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
Consumer Paul Hill incurred a medical debt, and the creditor hired Accounts Receivable Services, LLC to collect the debt.
On April 13, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin granted summary judgment to defendants in a lawsuit brought under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”) and the Wisconsin Consumer Act (“WCA”). A copy of the Court’s opinion can be found here.
The case arises from a state court