On June 18, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a consent order and announced an enforcement action against a company specializing in medical debt collection for mishandling consumer credit reporting disputes and preventing consumers from exercising important debt collection rights. The CFPB is ordering the company to provide over $5.4 million in relief to harmed
The Federal Communications Commission recently announced the agenda for its upcoming June 18 Open Meeting. The agenda includes a number of items on which the Commission is considering action. Of those items on the agenda, few are more important to many financial service companies than the Commission’s focus on “Protecting Consumers Against Unwanted Robocalls.”
According
In In Touch Concepts, Inc. d/b/a ZCOM v. Cellco Partnership, the Second Circuit joined the Seventh Circuit in holding that a federal court retains subject matter jurisdiction over a case that had previously been removed to federal court under the Class Action Fairness Act (“CAFA”), even after the plaintiff amended the complaint to remove
In a matter of first impression, a New Jersey appellate court found that whether a class is ascertainable – a factor that is commonly analyzed in federal court – played no role in its consideration of a “low-value” consumer class action. In Daniels v. Hollister Co., the court determined that ascertainability is not
A growing avalanche of lawsuits under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act spurred industry groups and businesses, particularly financial services companies, to file more than 20 petitions with the Federal Communications Commission seeking clarifications and interpretations of the TCPA’s requirements. An announcement by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler indicates that the Commissioners will be acting on the
Attorneys general from twenty-two states today announced that Classmates, Inc. which runs the website classmates.com, and Florists Transworld Delivery, Inc. and FTD.com, Inc. (collectively, “FTD”) have agreed to settle allegations that the companies were involved in misleading, unfair, and deceptive trade practices. Although FTD and Classmates did not admit to wrongdoing, they agreed to pay
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
In Abdelfattah v. DHS, the D.C. Circuit held that credit information obtained by the Department of Homeland Security on a person of interest can constitute a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Because DHS did not have a permissible purpose to obtain the information, it may be liable for an FCRA violation.
On May 1, the District Court for the Middle District of Alabama issued an order requesting that the parties provide supplemental briefing on the issue of standing in a lawsuit alleging Fair Credit Reporting Act violations. As we have previously reported on the blog, the Supreme Court recently granted certiorari in the Spokeo case
A district court in Florida quickly denied a motion by Whole Foods Market Group Inc. to stay a proposed class action under the Fair Credit Reporting Act until the Supreme Court rules on the pending matter in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, which addresses issues of claimed statutory violations. Whole Foods argued that the proposed