News in Brief June 2 – Teavana, Experian and More

New Cars Reportedly Being Sold With Defective Takata Airbags

According to Senate Democrats, four prominent automakers – VW, Fiat Chrysler, Mitsubishi and Toyota – are either selling or planning on selling new cars installed with Takata’s potentially defective airbags. Granted, selling the vehicles with the possibly defective parts isn’t illegal since the companies have until 2018 to completely replace the products in question, but blatantly selling a product with a well-known defect could be considered negligent – even for big auto companies.

Teavana Settles Exploding Tea Tumbler Claims

Teavana (owned by Starbucks) has agreed to pay a $3.75 million civil penalty to settle claims that it failed to report complaints about its glass tea tumblers exploding. The Consumer Product Safety Commission was split in its decision to penalize Teavana, which led to some internal scrutiny over the agency’s one-dimensional penalty policies.

Bank of America Workers' Overtime Class Action Denied Certification

A New Jersey judge denied class certification to a group of IT workers who claimed that Bank of America failed to pay them overtime wages. Judge Michael A. Shipp found that, based on the evidence provided (which dealt primarily with the plaintiffs’ specific circumstances), it can’t be assumed that the bank underpays all (or even most) of its IT workers – especially when the plaintiffs were recruited through third parties.

Experian, TransUnion Escape Inaccurate Credit Info Claims

Experian Information Solutions and TransUnion LLC have dodged claims that they violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act by wrongly reporting a customer’s child support payments as late. Judge Ron Clark dismissed the case with prejudice, stating that the controversy had been resolved. It isn’t clear if there was a settlement outside the courtroom, but both parties agreed to pay their own attorneys’ fees.

Payday Lenders Settle Robocall Lawsuit

A Nevada federal judge has given preliminary approval to a proposed settlement that would end a class action between a group of payday lenders and consumers. The proposed $8 million settlement would offer compensation to close to 18,000 people who were called by Dollar Loan Center, DLC Empire or Clark County Collection Service as they attempted to get a hold of defaulting borrowers. According to the lawsuit, the people who were called were listed as references on credit applications.