In a major, unanimous decision on the Truth in Lending Act, the Supreme Court resolved a circuit split and clarified borrowers’ rescission rights under TILA, potentially making rescission of a loan transaction easier for borrowers.  Under TILA, the time period governing the right to rescind a loan transaction depends on whether all required disclosures have…

Automotive sales and finance companies often are sued in California under either the Auto Sales Finance Act (“ASFA”) or the Vehicle Leasing Act (“VLA”).  Occasionally, these cases raise claims involving sizeable actual damages, but more often than not, they rest on purely technical disclosure violations or other violations that produced little or no actual or…

On January 7, online retailer Zappos.com Inc. reached a long-awaited settlement with nine states over a 2012 data breach that compromised personal and financial information of nearly 24 million of the company’s customers.  Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane said in a published statement that a hacker was able to access sensitive data pertaining to millions…

Last month, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its annual report on financial services regulations entitled “Dodd-Frank Regulations: Regulators’ Analytical and Coordination Efforts.”

According to this report, federal financial regulators— Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, National Credit…

On December 31, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in dismissing a class action appeal as moot, ruled that the putative class representative had not retained a personal stake in the class certification motion after voluntarily settling his individual claims.

In Campion v. Old Republic Protection Company, Inc., the plaintiff…

On December 29, a putative class action was filed against Airgas, Inc. for printing expiration dates on credit and debit card receipts.  The putative class action, Aliano et al. v. Airgas USA LLC et al., Case No. 14CH20024 (Cook County), alleges violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and identity theft.  Airgas is an…

In recent years, the industry has seen various types of foreclosure rescue fraud perpetrated against borrowers, lenders, and servicers.  One example is a California-based scam that caused losses of more than $2.5 million whereby the scam’s orchestrators recorded fraudulent documents in local courthouses in an effort to “cloud title” and halt or stall the foreclosure…

A settlement between the New York Department of Financial Services and automotive lender Condor Capital Corp., as well as Condor’s owner, Stephen Barron, was approved this week by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.  The settlement will result in total payments to the State and consumers of up to…

We have previously reported on the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s concern that the recent explosive growth of nonbank specialty mortgage servicers may pose operational and liquidity risks to such servicers and put in jeopardy Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (collectively, the Enterprises) that guarantee these mortgages.  In particular, FHFA concluded that the nonbank servicers’ use…

On October 31, a United States District Court certified a Fair Credit Reporting Act class action involving claims that an employer procured a background check through an improper disclosure form and took adverse action without following the proper adverse action protocol.  Although the Court’s decision did not address the merits of the case, the Court…