Another Blow to Class Action
This week, the Supreme Court continued its aggressive effort to favor corporations by forcing customers to raise grievances through individual arbitration rather than a class action or some other joint legal challenge...The decision makes it very hard, if not impossible, to stop bad corporate practices because the potential award for an individual would be too small to justify a suit.

Forced Arbitration: Killing the Right to Sue Big Companies, One TOS Agreement at a Time  So-called forced arbitration clauses say that in the event of a dispute, you won't be able to file a class-action suit. Instead, your dispute will be settled one-on-one in a private arbitration forum. These clauses are commonly inserted into terms of service agreements, which you must agree to if you want to use the product or service. For years, this practice was prohibited by law in many states. But in 2011 the Supreme Court ruled in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion that all state laws prohibiting forced arbitration clauses are preempted by the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act. And that opened the floodgates.

SEC's Aguilar Calls for End to Mandatory Arbitration Clauses
Such clauses, which are standard in brokerage contracts and often included by registered investment advisers, require any client claim of losses to be settled in binding arbitration instead of the courts. "Investors should not have their option of choosing between arbitration and the traditional judicial process taken away from them at the very beginning of their relationship with their brokers and advisers," Securities and Exchange Commission member Luis Aguilar said in prepared remarks for the North American Securities Administrators Association's annual conference in Washington on Tuesday. "By providing investors with the ability to choose the forum in which to bring their legal claims and protect their legal rights, we enhance investor protection and add more teeth to our federal securities laws."

Proposed ‘lemon law’ for new homes would only cover vets
The measure enjoys support among residents of Schertz and Cibolo, where foundation problems with dozens of relatively new homes — attributed largely to expansive soil — have caused heartaches for homeowners and headaches for municipal officials. Both cities have moved to strengthen their building codes. Cibolo Mayor Jennifer Hartman said her city has a high number of veterans but said the protections in HB 1887 should be expanded to cover all homeowners... She has successfully solicited support for the legislation from Guadalupe and Bexar County commissioners and from the Northeast Economic Partnership, a regional alliance of eight cities that includes Cibolo.

EDITORIAL: Home buyers need relief from the state
After a disastrous experience with the Texas Residential Constructio Commission, which ended in the agency being abolished, the Legislature has done little to address consumer and builder concerns that prompted the agency's creation...The agency was so flawed it did more harm than good to homebuyers and was dissolved in 2009... Legislation proposed by Democratic Reps. Joe Farias of San Antonio and Lon Burnam of Fort Worth would offer relief for homebuyers, but it does not protect all consumers...These problems are not unique to any region, and state lawmakers need to address them. Sidestepping the issues is unacceptable.

Hightower: Corporate kangaroo courts supplant our Seventh Amendment rights
Being wronged by a corporation is painful enough, but just try getting your day in court. Most Americans don’t realize it, but our Seventh Amendment right to a fair jury trial against corporate wrongdoers has quietly been stripped from us. Instead, we are now shunted into a stacked-deck game called “Binding Mandatory Arbitration.” Proponents of the process hail it as superior to the courts — “faster, cheaper and more efficient!” they exclaim. All you really need to know about today’s process is that it’s the product of years of conceptual monkey-wrenching by corporate lobbyists, Congress, the Supreme Court and hired-gun lobbying firms looking to milk the system for steady profits. First and foremost, these fixers have turned a voluntary process into the exact opposite: mandatory. Let’s look at this mess.

Lawmaker ignores housing issue
State Rep. John Kuempel is more interested in dogs and cats than he is in his own constituents.Homeowners all over Cibolo have been suffering from new homes with foundation failures caused by the shoddy construction practices of major home builders and we sought help from Rep. Kuempel. We asked him to file a bill in the Legislature to provide home buyers with the opportunity to have their lemon homes bought back by the builder when they have repeatedly failed to remedy significant problems... In the last days before the bill filing deadline, he wouldn't even meet with his constituents; instead he filed HB 1449, a bill to license and regulate dog and cat dealers.

Homebuyer Protection Act (Home Lemon Law) Filed
With the abolishment in 2010 of the homebuilders’ Texas Residential Construction Commission (TRCC), it marked the end of a long battle over the rights of homeowners. Today, as it was in 2001 before TRCC, to cut hair, catch a fish or drive a car requires a license, but anyone can be a builder in Texas. Knowledge and financial responsibility are optional to become a builder, but required to drive a car in this state. Homebuilding is unregulated, there is no state agency that oversees the industry or new home sales. New home warranties give a false sense of security.

Proposed home "Lemon Law" would protect buyers
You've heard about a Lemon Law for your car, but what about a Lemon Law for a bad house? Legislation is in the works which could protect you as a homebuyer. The city of Cibolo is backing the proposed homebuyer protection law in Austin. Once a small town, it's experiencing a housing boom with up to 500 homes built yearly. "Not only is supporting the homebuyers and citizens important, but we see this as an economic factor, and when these homes start to have issues, it starts to play on home values," Mayor Jennifer Hartman explained. "It takes away not only from the city but the county and the school district in their taxing entity."

Bills may protect homebuyers
Under the legislation, known as the home lemon law, if a problem covered under the home warranty isn't remedied in three attempts, the homebuilder must replace the house or accept its return and refund the purchase price and closing costs. But (Mayor) says the problem goes beyond the consumer. The defects cause homes to lose value, which means less revenue for the city, county, school districts and state.“We have to raise taxes on everyone because of our homes' depreciating value,” she said. “We had to raise taxes this year just to maintain the same amount of taxes although we're growing at such a high rate.” The legislative push has received local support form the Bexar County commissioners, who voted to back the initiative last week, said County Judge Nelson Wolff.

If life were fair, there would be a lemon law for houses
A significant number of new-home buyers discover they have terrible problems. Bad framing, crooked leaky roofs, other structural shortcomings. They then discover they can't sue the builder, because of fine print in the sales contract. Those little average citizen homeowners don't have lobbyists and don't donate big bucks to politicians.

Homeowners storm Capitol
Janet Ahmad, president of HomeOwners for Better Building, said TRCC's Texas Star Builder Program is the main point of contention. The program allows builders to qualify as "star builders," demonstrating knowledge, experience and history of financial responsibility, Ahmad said. She said this must be made mandatory for builders instead of optional, as it is under the current system.

Cibolo backs efforts for home buyer legislation
By a 6-0 vote, the Cibolo City Council Feb. 26 passed a resolution supporting state legislation that would provide protections and remedies for homeowners whose homes have structural problems. Cibolo is the first area city to support the home buyer protection legislation. Issues with substandard home building, Hartman said, have come up in cities across the state.  “We are trying to show it is not just a Cibolo, Metrocom, or San Antonio problem,” the mayor said. “It is way beyond our community. We need to address this at the state level and give home buyers protection.”

Critics call roofing legislation a job killer
A bill in the state Senate would require roofing contractors to be licensed and regulated for the first time inTexas...Legislators say the bill, which exempts new construction, would help consumers... a substitute bill is being written that is "a little less stringent."