November 24, 2007

Recent Articles on Foreclosure/Sub-Prime Disaster

At the always informative Consumer Law and Policy Blog, Deepak Gupta has an excellent article discussing some recent pieces of journalism discussing foreclosures and sub prime lending.

Alabama consumers have faced tremendous pain and suffering from wrongful foreclosures and from what appears to be illegal sales tactics and sometimes outright fraud in the making of sub-prime loans. We will post more articles about these subjects, particularly when we can provide some possible guidance on where to turn if you find yourself caught up in these types of problems.

November 23, 2007

More Good News For Alabama Consumers - Arbitration Provisions Limited By Court

Several times in the recent weeks courts have limited the ability of companies to forbid class actions in arbitration agreements. You can read about one a few days ago here which discusses the recent opinion by the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

Finally, you can read a great article by the Consumer Law & Policy Blog (Scott Nelson) about the Eleventh Circuit (which covers Alabama) decision in Dale v. Comcast. As Scott Nelson opens his post,


The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has become the latest court to hold that an arbitration clause that contains a waiver of a consumer's right to bring a class action may be unconscionable if its application would effectively prevent consumers from vindicating their rights.

It may be that the tide is turning so that if consumers are required to arbitrate, at least we will have all of our rights including the right to potentially bring class actions within arbitration.

We had an earlier post describing a decision back in August - you can read it by clicking here.