| Volume 142 Number 56 |
Subscribe to the Newsletter
Forward this news alert to your family and friends
Helpful Links
Texas Consumer Complaint Center
Credit Reports and Identity Theft
Your Guide to Small Claims Court
Contact Us
1-713-743-2168
The People’s Lawyer’s Tip of the Day
Have a consumer complaint? Visit the FTC Complaint Assistant, choose a category, answer a few questions about the complaint, and help the Federal Trade Commission detect patterns of fraud and abuse. Click here for more.
Appeals court rules 5G cell sites can’t skip environmental and historical review
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has encountered another roadblock in its effort to speed the rollout of 5G wireless service. A federal court has ruled that the agency overstepped its bounds when it tried to exempt 5G cell sites from environmental impact and historic preservation reviews. The FCC is concerned that the U.S. could fall behind in the deployment of the latest generation of wireless service and has been trying to aid providers in dealing with regulatory hurdles. But a U.S. appeals court ruled that cell sites using the new technology still must comply with existing regulations. Click here for more.
Your Money
Whether you've been burned before or simply want to take extra precautions to protect your identity, placing a fraud alert on your credit reports can give you peace of mind that your credit is safeguarded against identity thieves and scammers. The process for adding a fraud alert on your credit reports is fairly straightforward, requiring only a few steps: Click here for more.
For the Lawyers
Hyperlinks Aren't Enough For Debt Disclosure. The Seventh Circuit found an attempt to revive a woman's lawsuit claiming it violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by failing to properly inform her about debt obligations failed, holding that making her follow hyperlinks to the mandated disclosures wasn't lawful notification. The appellate panel backed a lower court's decision to grant summary judgment to Beth Lavallee, concluding that Med-1 failed to properly inform her about debt disclosures by sending an email with links to a vendor's website containing the documents and disclosures. By only conveying the company's name, email address and a link to the vendor, Med-1 failed to meet the bar for what qualifies as "communication" under the FDCPA. Lavallee v. Med-1 Solutions LLC, case number 17-3244. Click here for more.