| Volume 142 Number 81 |
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
Money lost to bogus charities and scammers means less donations to help those in need. And no one wants that, either here or abroad. Click here for more.
Auto workers on strike against GM until at least Friday
Members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union will vote Friday on a proposed contract with General Motors (GM), which could send 46,000 union members back to work and allow the company to resume vehicle production, which has been idled for more than a month. In the past, the ratification of a contract approved by union leadership has almost been a sure thing. Lately, however, it has been less certain. In 2015, workers at Fiat Chrysler (FCA) rejected a pact that the leadership had approved. At this point, no one is taking the rank and file vote for granted. The union leadership accepted a proposed contract with GM last week but said its 48,000 GM workers would remain on strike until the agreement was approved. The union pushed for increases in pay and benefits that it said were set aside a decade ago while the industry was trying to emerge from the Great Recession. Click here for more.
Your Money
Mortgages come with many options, and one of them is your loan term: a 15-year versus 30-year mortgage. A 30-year mortgage can make your payments more affordable, but a 15-year mortgage is generally cheaper overall. As you're weighing your mortgage options, here are the most important things to know about 15- and 30-year mortgages. Click here for more.
For the Lawyers
Class decertified under Spokeo. A California federal judge has decertified a class of roughly 6.5 million Walmart job applicants challenging the retail giant's background check procedures and remanded the dispute to state court. The judge found that the named plaintiffs had failed to allege an injury sufficient to meet the Spokeo standing bar. In January the judge certified a class of millions of Walmart job applicants accusing the company of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act and California's Investigative Consumer Reporting Agency Act by providing them with deficient background check disclosure forms between June 2012 and March 2019. The judge subsequently reversed his decision. The judge ruled that while the plaintiffs earlier in the litigation had put forth allegations sufficient to meet the Article III standing bar established in Spokeo v. Robbins, requiring plaintiffs to assert a concrete injury and cannot rely on mere statutory violations to be able to sue in federal court, the burden rested with the plaintiffs to maintain this posture as the case progressed. The judge found that as the dispute had proceeded to the summary judgment phase, the plaintiffs needed to advance more "specific facts" to demonstrate standing rather than rest on the "mere allegations" that had sustained them to date. Plaintiffs had failed to accomplish this, according to Judge Carter. "Even assuming, arguendo, that defendant's written disclosures were inadequate under the FCRA, named plaintiffs have failed to identify an injury stemming from this statutory violation that can suffice to support Article III standing," the judge wrote in his 16-page order. Click here for more.