In a recent unpublished but instructive decision, the Fourth Circuit in Roper v. Oliphant Financial, LLC, No. 24-1933 (4th Cir. July 23, 2025), affirmed the District of Maryland’s denial of a debt buyer’s motion to compel arbitration. The case serves as a critical reminder for consumer protection lawyers litigating time-barred debt claims: initiating collection litigation…
Midland Funding, a subsidiary of Encore Capital Group, is the world’s largest debt buyer and one of the most prolific users of Maryland’s District Court. It has filed tens of thousands of suits against Marylanders. But when one of those consumers, Mr. Cain, sued Midland Funding, Midland convinced the trial court and the intermediate appellate… Read more
Forced arbitration is a widespread problem for American consumers. Corporations bury complex terms in fine print, and then argue that consumers “agree” to arbitration in everyday contracts. But in general consumers have little understanding of what forced arbitration is or what rights they are “agreeing” to give up. Put simply, forced arbitration means: NO JUDGE,… Read more
The New York Times has published a three-part in depth series (1, 2, 3) on forced arbitration, in the wake the CFPB’s proposal to prohibit class action waivers through arbitration. The Times series covers many of the familiar problems with arbitration: the pressures on arbitrators to please the companies which select them, the denial of… Read more
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has to make an important decision soon, about arbitration clauses. Forced arbitration clauses (or “mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses” as they are sometimes called) appear in many standard consumer contracts. If you have a Paypal account, a mobile phone contract, a credit card, an employment contract, or if you have purchased… Read more
This must-see fantastic video about forced arbitration, also available on YouTube, tells you pretty much everything you need to know about forced arbitration and why and how it is undermining access to justice in the United States. As of the date of writing this blog entry (12/1/2014), the video has less than 7,000 views on… Read more
When it comes to consumer or employment contracts, forced arbitration is a problem in Maryland, and throughout the country. In their April, 2014 article titled “The Strip Mining of Legal Rights” Ralph Nader and Theresa Amato call for limits on the use of fine-print terms to undermine legal rights. They call the use of fine… Read more
Fine print boilerplate is everywhere, but what can be done to stop it? Theresa Amato writes in The Nation that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should take four steps to promote fairness in consumer contracts: Read more
In the Summer, 2014 issue of Washington Monthly, Lina Kahn wrote about how arbitration clauses are used by America’s corporations big and small to shield themselves from lawsuits. For example, suing Target over its loss of customer data to hackers: may seem like an archetypical story of our times, combining corporate misconduct, cyber-crime, and high-stakes… Read more
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