14 June 2018 – Consumer Financial Services Watch

CFPB Left with Rulemaking to Modify or Delay Payday Rule

Jun 14 2018

By: Jennifer Janeira Nagle, Robert W. Sparkes, Scott B. Hefferman

On Tuesday, June 12, 2018, a Texas federal judge denied a joint request from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) and two payday-lending trade groups to stay the August 2019 deadline for industry compliance with the Payday Loan Rule (the “Rule”). The decision was issued in Community Financial Services Association of America, Ltd., v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, No. 1:18-cv-295-LY, an action that was filed in April 2018 by the trade groups against the CFPB, seeking to invalidate the Rule as arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”), among other things. (For more about the litigation, click here.) In late May 2018, the plaintiff trade groups and the defendant CFPB jointly asked the Court to stay the Rule’s compliance deadline, but the Court’s decision Tuesday quickly and summarily rejected that request. The Court stayed only the litigation, leaving August 2019 as the operative date for industry participants to comply with the Rule.

No More Zombie Class Actions: Supreme Court Stops Class Members from Filing Successive Class Claims after Expiration of Limitations Period

Jun 14 2018

By: Andrew C. Glass, Roger L. Smerage, Elma Delic

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a plaintiff cannot file a class action outside the applicable statute of limitations merely because an unsuccessful prior class action tolled the limitations period for individual claims.[1] In China Agritech v. Resh,[2] the Court held that its prior jurisprudence “does not permit the maintenance of a follow-on class action past expiration of the statute of limitations.”[3] Rather, that jurisprudence only tolls the statute of limitations for unnamed class members to intervene in the action “individually or file individual claims if the class fails.”[4] In reaching this conclusion, the Court recognized that “[t]he Federal Rules [of Civil Procedure] provide a range of mechanisms to aid courts in” overseeing complex litigation, such as where individual claims are added on after a denial of class certification.[5] But, critically, “[w]hat the Rules do not offer is a reason to permit plaintiffs to exhume failed class actions by filing new, untimely class claims.”[6]

Archive:14 June 2018