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Hilton Head Hospital has been named in a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that the hospital paid kickbacks to a clinic that directed expectant, undocumented mothers living in the United States to the hospital as a way to increase Medicaid revenue. The federal qui tam lawsuit was recently unsealed, meaning that the […]

NC Policy Watch recently published an article highly critical of the North Carolina Supreme Court’s August 30, 2013 decision in Bumpers v. Community Bank of Northern Virginia. In Bumpers, the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed a summary judgment ruling in favor of a victim of predatory lending practices. In the […]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) issued a report on August 21, 2013 detailing widespread mortgage servicing problems at both banks and nonbanks. Read the Supervisory Highlights report. The report also found that a number of nonbanks lack effective systems for ensuring compliance with federal law. Under the Dodd-Frank Wall […]

Public Citizen, a national non-profit organization which represents consumer interests through, inter alia, lobbying, litigation, research, and public education, recently issued a comprehensive report which disproves the argument that medical malpractice litigation was the driving force behind increasing medical costs. The report is titled ‘No Correlation: Continued Decrease In Medical […]

We recently concluded a trial where we discovered that the insurance company was manipulating the actual cash value of the vehicle to keep from “totaling” a van. In North Carolina there is a safety rule that states if a vehicle is damaged where the repairs are going to cost 75 […]

onsumer Financial Protection Bureau Issues Bulletin Regarding Credit Reporting Disputes On September 4, 2013, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) issued a Bulletin setting forth CFPB’s expectations regarding investigation of consumer reporting agency disputes. The Bulletin stresses that companies that supply information to consumer reporting to consumer reporting companies (“furnishers”) […]

A U.S. government lawsuit against Bank of America Corp. related to the sale of billions of dollars of toxic mortgage loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is headed to trial in September. The government brought the case pursuant to the False Claims Act and the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery […]

According to The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration the annual number of traffic fatalities has increased for the first time in seven years. There were more than 34,000 death in 2012. That’s an increase of 5.3 percent. Meanwhile, AAA released survey results that show drivers are less worried about dangerous […]

Insurance reforms pushed by the New York Department of Financial Services now cover 100 percent of the New York force-placed insurance market. The Department of Financial Services recently announced settlements with four New York force-placed insurers (American Modern Insurance, Chubb, Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland, and FinSecure), that had […]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) implemented a rule, effective June 1, 2013, that prohibits mandatory arbitration clauses in residential mortgage loans or home equity lines of credit. Such loans cannot contain “terms that require arbitration or any other non-judicial procedure to resolve any controversy or settle any controversy or […]