Jeff Sovern
Bloomberg BNA’s Banking Daily quoted Professor Jeff Sovern in an article, Financial Firms Watch, Wait on CFPB Move to Limit Arbitration. According to the article:
“I think they are very troublesome,” Jeffrey Sovern, a law professor at St. John’s University, in New York, said of the arbitration clauses. “Class action lawsuits are a mechanism to deter businesses from taking advantage of consumers in small amounts,” he told Bloomberg BNA, echoing a point made by Cordray in his speech.
A customer who is mistakenly charged $30 on his mobile phone bill is unlikely to file a claim in court or arbitration to get the money back, and such a case is too small to justify hiring an attorney, Sovern said. If that customer files a class action on behalf of a million customers hit with similar charges, that’s a $30 million lawsuit, and the dynamics have changed.
St. John's University Law Faculty Blog 
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