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While Equifax Victims Sue, Congress Limits Financial Class Actions (marketwatch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a local NBC news report:
Stories are starting to pour in about those impacted by last month's massive Equifax data breach, which compromised the private information of more than 140 million people. Katie Van Fleet of Seattle says she's spent months trying to regain her stolen identity, and says it has been stolen more than a dozen times. "I kept receiving letters from Kohl's, from Macy's, from Home Depot, from Old Navy saying 'thank you for your application,'" she said to CNN affiliate KCPQ. But she says she's never applied for credit from any of those places. Instead, Van Fleet and her attorney Catherine Fleming say they believe her personal data was stolen during the massive Equifax security breach... Fleming has filed a class-action lawsuit against Equifax, saying they were negligent in losing private information on more than 140 million Americans... "Countless people, I mean, I've really, truly lost count, and the stories that like Katie's, the stories I hear are heart-wrenching," Fleming said.
But are things about to get worse? Marketwatch reports: It will become harder for consumers to sue their banks or companies like Equifax... The Senate voted Tuesday night to overturn a rule the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau worked on for more than five years. The final version of the rule banned companies from putting "mandatory arbitration clauses" in their contracts, language that prohibits consumers from bringing class-action lawsuits against them. It applies to institutions that sell financial products, including bank accounts and credit cards. Consumer advocates say it's good news for companies like Wells Fargo or Equifax, which have both had class-action lawsuits filed against them, and bad news for their customers... Lisa Gilbert, the vice president of legislative affairs at Public Citizen, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., said the Senate vote shouldn't impact cases that are already ongoing. However, there will "certainly" be more forced arbitration clauses in contracts in the future, and fewer cases brought against companies, she said.
But are things about to get worse? Marketwatch reports: It will become harder for consumers to sue their banks or companies like Equifax... The Senate voted Tuesday night to overturn a rule the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau worked on for more than five years. The final version of the rule banned companies from putting "mandatory arbitration clauses" in their contracts, language that prohibits consumers from bringing class-action lawsuits against them. It applies to institutions that sell financial products, including bank accounts and credit cards. Consumer advocates say it's good news for companies like Wells Fargo or Equifax, which have both had class-action lawsuits filed against them, and bad news for their customers... Lisa Gilbert, the vice president of legislative affairs at Public Citizen, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., said the Senate vote shouldn't impact cases that are already ongoing. However, there will "certainly" be more forced arbitration clauses in contracts in the future, and fewer cases brought against companies, she said.
Consumer lawsuits are out of control. Companies are being held back from being innovative by these asinine lawsuits. So called consumer "rights" have gone too far and this rollback is long due.
That is totally what America needs: giving more power to special interest groups.
Why do so many people (other than the 1% expecting their tax cuts) continually vote against their own best interests?
Why do so many people think they can decide what is the "best interests" of other people? Your elitist "know-it-all" attitude is part of the problem. If you really want to know why working class people are abandoning the Democratic Party, perhaps you should talk to some of them, and spend less time lecturing and more time listening.
Obviously allowing class actions against corporations (the topic of this thread) is in people's best interests.
How is this "obvious"? In a class action lawsuit, no net wealth is created, and all the legal fees and a large portion of the award goes to lawyers. So it is obvious that it make all the non-lawyers collectively worse off.
When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule allowing consumers to sue banks and financial institutions was killed in Congress last week, it was done only with Republican votes. When it was killed in the Senate, it was done only with Republican votes. Not a single Democrat voted for this giveaway to the banks.
No, the two parties in the United States are not "two sides of the same coin". They are not morally equivalent.
They keep you all worked up about gays and NFL players taking a knee and blacks getting all the good looking white women, but when it comes right down to it, if you're getting fucked, you're getting fucked by Republicans.
You are welcome on my lawn.