| Volume 112 Number 1 |
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The People’s Lawyer’s Tip of the Day
It is very difficult to keep your online accounts secure in an age where personal information is routinely stolen and sold to cyber-criminals. One thing that you should be able to do for your important financial accounts is to request "multifactor authentication" to access the account. Using this safety measure, when you try to access the account, not only will it require your password, but it will also require that you enter a temporary code, sent to you via text or email, to access your account. This extra step may slow you down a little, but it can stop cyber-criminals in their tracks. Click here for more.
100,000 Taxpayers' IRS Accounts Hacked
Cyber-criminals used taxpayer's social security numbers and other personal information to illegally obtain access to their old tax returns on the IRS website. It appears that the criminals then used that information to prepare fake tax returns for 100,000 taxpayers and direct fraudulent refunds to their own bank accounts by electronic transfer. The security problem is not with the IRS website, but hackers used personal information obtained from other sources, perhaps from earlier data breaches of other companies, to access the taxpayer's information on the IRS website. Click here for more.
Your Money
A recent sobering report indicated than almost half of Americans would have to borrow money if faced with a sudden expense of just $400. This is troubling news when many financial planners say that people should keep cash savings equal to 3-6 months of their expenses on hand. For the more fortunate, despite the poor return on cash investments in recent times, there are reasons to make a place for some of it in your portfolio. Click here for more.
For the Lawyers
The Southern District of New York denied class certification to a proposed class action lawsuit against Morgan Stanley arising out of the housing crisis. The case was based upon a disparate impact claim under the Fair Housing Act that African-American borrowers in the Detroit region who received loans from New Century, a large subprime lender, were more likely to receive a “Combined-Risk Loan” than white borrowers. The suit identified a “Combined-Risk Loan” as one which was a “high-cost loan” under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, and also had at least two or more of seven other “high-risk” features, such as being a “stated income” loan, having an adjustable rate, or having a high loan-to-value ratio. The court held that the proposed class was unworkable because the definition of “Combined Risk Loan” resulted in hundreds of potential combinations of loan types, a putative class with 33 combinations of loan types, but class representatives who represented only 4 combinations of loan types. Because of this, the court held that the representative Plaintiffs’ claims were not typical of the putative class, and court could envision no uniform trial that could address the issues in the case as required by Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)(3). Adkins v. Morgan Stanley,No.12-CV-7667(VEC), 2015 WL 2258231 (S.D.N.Y. May 14, 2015) Click here for more.