St. John's University Law Faculty Blog

Director of the Law School’s Securities Arbitration Clinic Christine Lazaro was quoted in a recent article, Should Dozens of FINRA Arbitration Cases Be Reopened?  The article centers on a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) arbitrator who was removed from FINRA’s arbitrator roster after falsely claiming to be a lawyer.  The main issue is whether there is any remedy with respect to the cases in which he served as an arbitrator over the past 15 years.  Here’s an excerpt:

Arbitrators have immunity for civil liability, but that does not apply in situations of fraud or corruption, explains Christine Lazaro, director of the securities arbitration clinic at St. John’s University School of Law.

 

The leading peer-reviewed journal on consumer affairs, the Journal of Consumer Affairs, has published Professor Jeff Sovern’s article, Fixing Consumer Protection Laws So Borrowers Understand Their Payment Obligations, in a special issue titled The New Era in Consumer Protection Regulation.  Here is the abstract:

 The millions of consumers who defaulted on their mortgages in recent years should all have received disclosures mandated by the federal Truth in Lending Act (“TILA”), which requires that lenders inform borrowers of certain loan terms including monthly payments required. Yet many of those borrowers seem not to have understood what their payment obligations were. In fact, TILA, which was intended to enable consumers to borrow wisely, not only failed the subprime borrowers in that goal, but was interpreted to require lenders to provide misleading disclosures that might have persuaded borrowers that their loans were more affordable than they would turn out to be. This article attempts to substantiate the claim that the laws in place during the years in which the subprime loan buildup occurred did not provide the aid consumers needed in making borrowing decisions, and explores strategies to improve the disclosure environment.