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I just received an invitation to a free dinner at a very good steak house. I do not know what is going to be served at the steak house. It has been many years since I have dined at the steak house but my memory was the food was excellent, […]

Representative Brad Miller of North Carolina recently introduced the Freedom and Mobility in Banking Act. The purpose of the act is to make it easier for consumers to close their account with one bank and move to another bank or credit union. The act follows recent announcements of fee increases […]

Recently, Bank of America announced that it would charge customers a fee of $5.00 per month in any month that the customer uses a debit card to make a purchase. The move created a firestorm among Bank of America customers, who launched a barrage of email complaints and an Internet […]

Many legal commentators interpreted the United States Supreme Court’s April 11 decision in ‘AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion’ as the death knell of consumer class actions. In AT&T, a divided Supreme Court held that the Federal Arbitration Act preempts, or invalidates, any state law which established a higher threshold for enforceability […]

A new national consumer protection agency has begun work on behalf of American consumers. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was established in June 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The new agency is charged with ensuring consumers have the information they need […]

The highly publicized case of Jamie Leigh Jones, the woman who alleged she was assaulted while working for defense contractor KBR, demonstrates that juries should be trusted. Ms. Jones claimed that during her employment for KBR in Iraq, she was drugged and raped by a company employee. When she asserted […]

The most conservative United States Supreme Court in nearly a century recently continued its assault on the constitutional rights of ordinary citizens harmed by corporate wrongdoing. In the case of AT&T v. Concepcion, the Supreme Court told corporations that they could write into the fine print of most any contract, […]

The United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of generic drug manufacturers in PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, holding that federal drug regulations applicable to generic drug manufacturers bar the plaintiffs’ state-law failure to warn claims. The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, held that manufacturers of generic drugs cannot be […]

The United States Supreme Court ruled against a class of current and former female employees of Wal-Mart who had sued the nation’s largest private employer for employment discrimination. In ruling in favor of Wal-Mart, the court continued a disturbing trend of siding with big business and against individuals. In reversing […]

A bill was recently introduced in the Senate which would prohibit corporations from including arbitration clauses in their standard contracts with consumers and non-union employees. Though the Federal Arbitration Act, passed in 1925, was originally intended to cover only certain types of disputes, such as those between merchants and where […]