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Special Alert: District Court Confirms Telephonic Consent to Preauthorized ACH Debits Complies with ESIGN and EFTA
On February 17, a U.S. District Court in Nashville, TN found that a creditor complied with both the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act[1] (“ESIGN”) and the Electronic Fund Transfer Act[2] and its implementing regulation, Regulation E[3] (collectively “EFTA”) when it obtained a consumer’s “written” authorization over the telephone to enroll in recurring ACH payments and mailed a paper copy of the authorization to the consumer two days later.[4] This case (“Blatt”) is significant because it clarifies and confirms much of the existing understanding of the interaction between ESIGN and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, and provides precedent for advancing the validity of widespread industry practices in other courts.
[1] 15 U.S.C. § 7001, et seq.
[2] 15 U.S.C. § 1693, et seq.
[3] 12 C.F.R. §1005.1, et seq.
[4] Blatt v. Capital One Auto Finance, [Memorandum and Order] No. 2:15-cv-00015, 2017 WL 660677 (M.D.Tenn. Feb. 17, 2017).
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Click here to read full special alert.If you have questions about the ruling or other related issues, visit our FinTech and Auto Finance practice pages for more information, or contact a Buckley Sandler attorney with whom you have worked in the past.
Special Alert: Madden Class Action Moves Forward
On February 27, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a ruling in Madden v. Midland Funding, LLC,[1] holding that New York’s fundamental public policy against usury overrides a Delaware choice-of-law clause in the plaintiff’s credit card agreement. The court allowed the plaintiff to proceed with Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”) claims (and related state unfair or deceptive acts or practices claims) against the defendants, a debt buyer that had purchased the plaintiff’s charged-off credit card debt and its affiliated debt collector. The court did not allow plaintiff’s claims for violations of New York’s usury law to proceed, as it held that New York’s civil usury statute does not apply to defaulted debts and that the plaintiff cannot directly enforce the criminal usury statute. The court also granted the plaintiff’s motion for class certification.
[1] No. 11-CV-8149, 2017 WL 758518 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 27, 2017).
Click here to read full special alert* * *
If you have questions about the ruling or other related issues, visit our Class Actions practice for more information, or contact a Buckley Sandler attorney with whom you have worked in the past.
FTC Issues New Top 10 Consumer Complaint Categories in Annual Summary
On March 3, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued an annual summary of consumer complaints, highlighting trends in the various categories of consumer complaints received by the Commission over the past year. The agency released its overview in the form of the Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book for January - December 2016 (2016 Data Book)—which provides category breakdowns and state specific data extrapolated from the Consumer Sentinel Network (CSN)—a secure online database of millions of consumer complaints available only to law enforcement, including, but not limited to, the FTC. In compiling the 2016 Data Book, the CSN collected more than 3.1 million consumer complaints, which the FTC sorted into 30 top complaint categories.
Florida, Georgia and Michigan were (again) the top three states for fraud and other complaints, while Michigan, Florida and Delaware were the top three states for identity theft complaints. The 2016 Data Book also reveals that debt-collection complaints remained the top category, comprising 28 percent of all complaints. The Commission attributes this “high number of reported debt collection complaints” to, among other things, “complaints submitted by a data contributor who collects complaints via a mobile app.” The Commission also identifies “imposter scams” as a “serious and growing problem.” In response to this trend, Acting Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, Thomas Pahl, indicates that the agency “will use all the tools at its disposal to address it,” including “law enforcement actions against scammers and consumer education to help consumers avoid losing money.”
Another category that saw some movement was identity theft. While overall complaints in this category declined from 16 percent to 13 percent, 29 percent were consumers reporting that their data was used to commit tax fraud. Furthermore, there was a jump in those who reported “that their stolen data was used for credit card fraud. . .[a number that] rose from nearly 16 percent in 2015 to more than 32 percent in 2016.” And, rounding out the “Top Ten” consumer complaints for 2016 after debt-collection, imposter scams, and identify theft, were: telephone and mobile services, banks and lenders, prizes/sweepstakes/lotteries, shop-at-home/catalog sales, auto-related complaints, credit bureaus/information furnishers/report users, and television and electronic media complaints.
More information about the Consumer Sentinel Network and Data Book is available through www.FTC.gov/sentinel.
District Court Advances Securitization Case Involving N.Y. State Usury Law
On February 27, a U.S. District Court in White Plains, N.Y. issued an Order ruling on motions for summary judgment and class certification in a consumer class-action against a debt collection company that purchased defaulted consumer debt from a national bank, and its affiliate, which sought collection of debt charged at a rate in excess of New York state usury limits. Midland Funding v. Madden, [Opinion & Order] No. 11-CV-8149 (CS) (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 1, 2017).
As previously covered by InfoBytes, the district court had originally ruled in Defendants’ favor, holding that the National Banking Act (NBA) preempted state law usury claims against purchasers of debt from national banks. The Second Circuit, however, overturned that ruling in a May 2015 opinion to the extent it relied on the NBA, but remanded the case for a determination whether Delaware choice of law provisions in the credit agreement precluded the Plaintiff’s claims because the rates were not usurious in Delaware.
Now, revising the issue on remand, the District Court held that New York’s criminal usury cap (but not the civil usury) applies to Plaintiff’s defaulted debt, notwithstanding the Delaware choice of law provision. The Court reasoned that New York does not follow the “rule of validation” (calling for courts to assume the parties intended to enter into a valid contract and apply the law of the state whose usury law would sustain it). The Court concluded, therefore, that the Plaintiff could predicate her FDCPA claims on a violation of New York’s criminal usury cap. Based on the foregoing, the Court granted partial summary judgment for the Defendant. The court also granted, but modified, Plaintiff’s request for class certification.
Chairman of House Judiciary Committee Introduces Major Litigation Reform Bill
In February, Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) introduced a new bill (H.R. 985) designed to “assure fairer, more efficient outcomes for claimants and defendants” in class-action and multi-district litigation. Dubbed the “Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2017,” the proposed legislation would add a number of new hurdles and disclosure requirements that must be satisfied in connection with any case seeking class certification in federal court.
Among other things, the proposed law would: (i) provide for mandatory disclosures designed to prevent the approval of class actions in which the lawyer representing the class is a relative of a party in the class action suit; (ii) require that “any third-party funding agreement be disclosed to the district court”; and (iii) require federal circuit courts to accept any appeals of district court orders granting or denying class certification. In addition, for plaintiffs seeking “monetary relief,” the law would add an express requirement that the plaintiff “affirmatively demonstrate that each proposed class member suffered the same type and scope of injury as the named class representative.” Moreover, the bill also seeks to address disproportionately large attorney’s fee awards by, among other things, limiting class counsel’s fees to a “reasonable percentage” of the total amount of payments both “distributed to and received by class members,” and, similarly capping the total fee award to no more than that “received by all class members.”
Rep. Goodlatte—who is currently serving as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee—also authored the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 and was also behind another class action reform bill introduced in 2015 that failed to clear the Senate . As explained by the Chairman, the proposed legislation “seeks to maximize recoveries by deserving victims, and weed out unmeritorious claims that would otherwise siphon resources away from innocent parties.”
District Court Denies Injunction Against “Operation Choke Point” Activities
On February 23, a U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a Memorandum Opinion denying a request for injunctive relief sought by a group of payday lenders to stop “Operation Choke Point” – a DOJ initiative targeting fraud by investigating US banks and the business they do with companies believed to be a higher risk for fraud and money laundering including, but not limited to, payday lenders. Payday lenders have called the initiative a coordinated effort by federal regulators to stop banks from doing business with them, thereby threatening their survival. See Advance America v. FDIC, [Memorandum Opinion No. 134] No. 14-CV-00953-GK (D.D.C. Feb. 23, 2017). According to the lenders, the Fed, FDIC, and OCC have adopted DOJ guidance on bank reputation risk and then used that guidance to exert “backroom regulatory pressure seeking to coerce banks to terminate longstanding, mutually beneficial relationships with all payday lenders.” The government has rejected this characterization, asserting that banks can do business with payday lenders as long as the risks are managed properly.
Evaluating the request under the due process “stigma-plus rule,” the Court focused on whether the payday lenders could show they were likely to succeed on the merits of their case and whether or not they were likely to suffer irreparable harm without the injunction.
Ultimately, the payday lenders were unable to convince the Court that they were likely to suffer the harm central to a “stigma-plus” claim. The Court reasoned that (i) the closure of some bank accounts would not be enough to constitute the loss of banking services, and that the lenders needed (and failed) to show that the loss of banking services had effectively prevented them from offering payday loans; and (ii) nearly all of the lenders were still in operation; and (iii) because the lenders were still able to find banks to work with, evidence of the possibility of future loss of banking services was too speculative to support an injunction.
The Court was also not persuaded that the lenders would be able to prove that regulatory actions caused banks to deny services to petitioners. Specifically, the Court determined that the lenders were “unlikely” to be able to set forth evidence of the “campaign of backroom strong-arming” underlying petitioners’ request for injunctive relief. Specifically, the Court noted that the lenders relied on “scattered statements,” some of which the Court characterized as “anonymous double hearsay,” to support their claims. The only direct evidence, according to the Court, was actually just “evidence of a targeted enforcement action against a single scofflaw.”
Though the Court explained that the two other factors—the balance of equities and the public interest—were of less significance in this situation, it noted in closing that “enjoining an agency’s statutorily delegated enforcement authority is likely to harm the public interest, particularly where plaintiffs are unable to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits.”
Senate Confirms Ben Carson for HUD Secretary
On March 2, Dr. Ben S. Carson was sworn in as the 17th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Vice President Mike Pence administered the oath of office. Earlier in the day, the Senate confirmed the retired neurosurgeon as the new secretary of the HUD Secretary in a 58-41 vote, primarily along party lines. The Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee unanimously voted to move Carson out of committee on January 24. Dr. Carson’s full biography is available here.
FDIC Releases March List of CRA Compliance Examinations
On March 3, the FDIC published its monthly list of state nonmember banks recently evaluated for compliance with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The list reports CRA evaluation ratings assigned to institutions in December 2016. Monthly lists of all state nonmember banks whose evaluations have been made publicly available since July 1, 1990 can be accessed through the FDIC's website.
House Financial Services Committee Approves Budget Views and Estimates for FY2018
On March 1, the House Financial Services Committee met in open session and voted, along party lines, to approve its Budget Views and Estimates for Fiscal Year 2018. Among other things, the plan calls for advancing “legislative proposals—including the Financial CHOICE Act—to replace the failed aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act with free-market alternatives that end bailouts, restore market discipline, ensure that the financial system is more resilient, pare back unnecessary and burdensome regulations, encourage capital formation and economic growth, and protect consumers by preserving financial independence and consumer choice.” In addition, the Committee intends to advance legislation to place the non-monetary policy activities of the independent agencies within the Committee’s jurisdiction on the appropriations process. The Committee voted down, along party lines, a series of amendments submitted by the Democratic members.
FDIC Announces 22 January 2017 Enforcement Actions
On February 24, the FDIC released its list of administrative enforcement actions taken against banks and individuals in January. Several of the consent agreements included on the list seek the payment of civil money penalties for, among other things, violations of the Flood Disaster Protection Act of 1973 and its flood insurance requirements. Other violations cited in the enforcement actions relate to unsafe or unsound banking practices and breaches of fiduciary duty. The FDIC database containing all of its enforcement decisions and orders may be accessed here.