{"id":242263,"date":"2016-05-08T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2016-05-08T12:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-proposes-class-action-boost-for-bank-victims\/"},"modified":"2016-05-08T12:00:45","modified_gmt":"2016-05-08T12:00:45","slug":"consumer-financial-protection-bureau-proposes-class-action-boost-for-bank-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-proposes-class-action-boost-for-bank-victims\/","title":{"rendered":"Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Proposes Class-Action Boost for Bank Victims"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"(Photo:(Photo: Joe Gratz<\/a>) <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A long-anticipated regulation proposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) aims to restore the ability of customers to sue\u00a0misbehaving banks and credit card companies.<\/p>\n

The rule<\/a>\u00a0would prohibit so-called “forced arbitration” clauses, which firms\u00a0have used\u00a0to deny customers\u00a0an opportunity to file class action lawsuits.\u00a0Forced into one-on-one proceedings, cheated Americans\u00a0are often over-matched by their\u00a0corporate\u00a0abuser’s legal resources, and unlikely to recoup any damages.<\/p>\n

“Signing up for a credit card or opening a bank account can often mean signing away your right to take the company to court if things go wrong,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray in a statement<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The rule marks one of the more significant actions taken by the consumer watchdog since it was chartered by the Dodd-Frank reform law in 2010. Forced arbitration — called a “contract gotcha” by the CFPB — had been banned in the mortgage industry by Dodd-Frank.\u00a0The law also specifically instructed the agency to study the practice throughout the financial sector.<\/p>\n

Last March, the CFPB released a report<\/a>, which found that\u00a0three-out-of-four Americans were unaware that their credit card or bank account contracts contain hidden forced-arbitration language.<\/p>\n

If the rule is finalized following a 90-day public comment period, it will apply only to financial firms regulated by the consumer watchdog. Other businesses, including telecoms and healthcare providers, have also increasingly relied on forced arbitration clauses — upheld as legal in 2011 by the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Wall Street is expected to vigorously oppose the rule, since it could open them up to billions of dollars in claims, while forcing\u00a0them to change\u00a0business practices. The US Chamber of Commerce wasted no time in claiming<\/a> that the regulation was a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” that will harm consumers.<\/p>\n

The CFPB’s findings, however, call that claim into disrepute. The bureau found that\u00a0between 2010-2011,…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Photo: Joe Gratz) A long-anticipated regulation proposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) aims to restore the ability of customers to sue\u00a0misbehaving banks and credit card companies. The rule\u00a0would prohibit so-called “forced arbitration” clauses, which firms\u00a0have used\u00a0to deny customers\u00a0an opportunity to file class action lawsuits.\u00a0Forced into one-on-one proceedings, cheated Americans\u00a0are often over-matched by their\u00a0corporate\u00a0abuser’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":242264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-242263","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}