Photo of Paige Fitzgerald

Paige regularly advises financial services clients in navigating complex federal and state laws in an array of fields, including mortgage lending and servicing, consumer lending, auto finance, and tobacco. As a 10-year veteran of the Virginia Attorney General’s office, she also uses her regulatory expertise to counsel clients in the health care industry, with an emphasis on Medicaid reimbursement and compliance.

On June 10, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a final rule defining larger participants of the automobile financing market.  The new rule will become effective 60 days after being published in the Federal Register.  The final rule follows up the CFPB’s proposed rule, issued on September 17, 2014, on which we previously reported here

On May 20, the three national consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) – Equifax Information Services LLC, Experian Information Solutions Inc., and TransUnion LLC – inked a deal with thirty-one state attorneys general to end an investigation initiated in 2012 by the Ohio Attorney General’s office.

Under the multistate settlement, which is in the form of

On March 26, the Federal Trade Commission conducted a media call regarding the completion of “Operation Ruse Control,” a joint effort targeting deceptive auto dealer practices involving approximately 252 enforcement actions executed by the FTC and approximately 30 other government agencies.  During the media call, two individuals –  Jessica Rich, Director of the

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently issued its Winter 2015 Supervisory Highlights report which provides an overview of the supervision work completed by the CFPB from July through December 2014.  Matters resolved by the CFPB’s Supervision side are non-public in nature and are resolved, not generally through the payment of large fines and penalties, but

A recent decision of the Northern District of Ohio, Vantu v. Echo Recovery, L.L.C., held that a repossession agency, while generally not subject to liability under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, becomes subject to such liability when it undertakes to repossess collateral that it does not have a present right to possess.

This case

Several attorneys from Troutman Sanders attended this week’s meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General in Washington, during which Richard Cordray, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and former Ohio Attorney General, provided an overview of the four obstacles that, in his view, “interfere with justice and dignity for consumers.”  He referred to

We’ve been reporting for almost two years now on federal regulators’ attempts to use an effects-based test for discrimination – disparate impact – to fundamentally alter the auto sales and finance industries, and how those efforts have consistently gained steam from late 2013 through to more recent times.  We’ve also reported on challenges to

At the invitation of Thompson Reuters Legal Insights and Analytics, attorneys Maryia Jones, Jason Manning, and Paige Fitzgerald delivered a presentation on TILA’s loan originator compensation rule (the “Rule”), which remains one of the CFPB’s enforcement priorities and a focus of plaintiffs’ bar in private lawsuits.  The presentation was delivered to an audience of mortgage

On February 10, the Department of Justice and the North Carolina Attorney General filed a consent decree to settle claims that a Charlotte-area “buy here pay here” dealer engaged in intentionally discriminatory “reverse redlining” practices.  The regulators alleged that the defendants specifically targeted African-American customers and imposed onerous credit terms upon them without regard to

The Federal Trade Commission announced on January 30 that it has reached settlements with two auto title lenders operating in Georgia and Alabama.  The FTC had alleged that the lenders advertised certain offers without disclosing specific conditions required to receive the advertised rate, and failed to disclose that finance charges may rise after an introductory