Law Office of Emily Gomez, LLC

09/23/2026

A $694 million auto lending settlement announced last week raises a consumer protection question that goes well beyond cars.

When does access to credit stop being helpful?

State attorneys general alleged that Credit Acceptance Corporation made high-cost auto loans it knew many consumers were likely to default on. Regulators also raised concerns about expensive add-ons being packed into financing contracts.

For someone with poor credit, an approval can feel like a solution. A car may be necessary to get to work, take children to school, or simply live somewhere without reliable public transportation.

But an approval is not necessarily a benefit if the numbers make failure predictable.

That distinction matters.

Consumer finance often treats access to credit as the goal. I think affordability has to be part of that conversation too.

A loan that gets someone into a car but predictably ends with repossession, damaged credit, and remaining debt can leave that person worse off than when the transaction began.

The interesting question for lenders, regulators, and consumers is not simply, "Can this person qualify?"

It is, "Is this financial product structured in a way that gives them a reasonable chance to succeed?"

Those are two very different standards.

09/22/2026

Debt collection lawsuits are rising across the US. Learn what consumers should know about credit card debt, medical bills, purchased accounts, and other consumer obligations move through state court systems.

Debt collection lawsuits are rising across the US. Learn what consumers should know about debt buyers, default judgments and their rights.

07/20/2026

Debt collection lawsuits are climbing again, but the number of cases is only part of the story.

A new analysis from Pew found that a relatively small group of debt buyers and financial companies is responsible for a growing share of filings. One company reportedly filed nearly five times as many cases in 2025 as it did in 2019.

Many of these lawsuits involve credit card, bank, or medical debts worth only a few thousand dollars.

Yet the consequences can be significant.

When a consumer does not respond, the court may enter a default judgment. That judgment can lead to wage garnishment, frozen accounts, added legal costs, and financial damage that lasts far longer than the original debt.

The legal system assumes that receiving court papers gives someone a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves.

In practice, many consumers do not understand who is suing them, whether the balance is accurate, or what they must file to avoid losing automatically.

That raises a basic consumer protection question.

Is access to court truly equal when one side files thousands of nearly identical cases and the other side may be navigating the legal system for the first time?

Debt collection lawsuits may be routine for the companies filing them.

For the person being sued, they are anything but routine.

07/16/2026

The Cash App settlement raises an important question about where responsibility sits when a financial platform is easy to use but difficult to navigate when something goes wrong.

According to a multistate investigation, Cash App was marketed as safe and secure while consumers allegedly faced weak fraud protections, limited customer support, delayed investigations, and problems obtaining refunds.

One detail stands out.

For years, consumers who searched online for a customer service phone number could end up calling scammers because the platform did not provide live phone support. The person trying to report fraud could become the victim of another fraud while looking for help.

That is not just a customer service problem.

It shows how gaps in a company’s support system can create opportunities for scammers.

Consumer protection discussions often focus on whether a transaction was authorized. But the process after a suspicious transaction matters too. Can the consumer reach a real person? Is the complaint investigated? Is the account restored? Are legally required refunds issued?

A financial product is not truly convenient if it becomes nearly impossible to resolve a problem once money disappears.

The real measure of a payment platform is not how quickly it moves money when everything works.

It is what happens when it does not.

06/30/2026

The Long Island deed scam allegations are a good reminder that mortgage fraud does not always look like a dramatic movie plot.

Sometimes it looks like paperwork.

A deed. A mortgage. A promise that the title is clean. A distressed seller who needs cash. A buyer who believes they are finally getting a home.

According to recent reporting, some buyers allegedly paid large sums for properties only to later discover unresolved mortgages, ownership problems, or foreclosure risks.

That is what makes these cases so devastating. The harm is not just financial. It is emotional, practical, and deeply disruptive.

Most consumers are not trained to spot title issues, lien problems, or unusual deed transfers. They rely on the people involved in the transaction to be honest and on the process to catch problems before money changes hands.

Consumer protection is often discussed in terms of credit cards, debt collectors, and credit reports.

But home transactions deserve just as much attention.

For many people, buying a home is the largest financial decision they will ever make. When that process is manipulated, the damage can follow them for years.

The bigger issue is trust.

A real estate transaction should not require consumers to become forensic investigators just to know whether the home they are buying is actually safe to buy.

06/22/2026

The FTC’s latest imposter scam data should make every consumer protection lawyer, financial institution, and digital platform pause.

Consumers reported losing $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025. That is not just a fraud statistic. It is a signal that scammers are getting better at borrowing trust from real institutions.

They pretend to be banks. Government agencies. Toll systems. Utility companies. Tech support teams. Sometimes they do not need to hack anything. They simply make the message look official enough that a person feels pressured to act before they think.

That is where the consumer law issue gets interesting.

Fraud prevention is often framed as personal responsibility. Be careful. Do not click. Verify before paying.

All of that matters. But it is only part of the story.

When scams rely on impersonating trusted systems, the burden cannot sit entirely on the consumer. Businesses, platforms, banks, and regulators all have a role in making fraud harder to execute.

The question is not whether consumers need education.

They do.

The bigger question is whether the systems around them are designed to slow scams down before the money is gone.

05/11/2026

The Trader Joe’s receipt settlement is a useful reminder that consumer protection cases are often about risk, not just harm.

The allegation was that some receipts printed too many digits of customers’ payment card numbers, potentially exposing consumers to identity theft risk under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act. Trader Joe’s denied wrongdoing and stated there were no known fraud cases tied to the issue, but still agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement.

That distinction matters.

A large part of consumer law is preventive. The legal system does not always wait for financial loss to occur before imposing obligations. In many areas, the focus is on reducing foreseeable risk before consumers are harmed.

What makes these cases interesting is that they often sit at the intersection of technical compliance and practical consumer expectations. Most consumers never think about how many digits appear on a receipt. But Congress decided years ago that limiting that information reduces the likelihood of fraud and identity theft.

So even when there is no allegation of actual misuse, the exposure itself can become the basis for litigation.

That framework reflects a broader principle in consumer law. Transparency and security obligations are often judged not only by outcomes, but by whether reasonable safeguards were followed in the first place.

04/28/2026

The lawsuit against OneMain Financial is worth paying attention to, not because it is unusual, but because it is familiar.

The allegations focus on something that shows up repeatedly in consumer finance. The base product is not the real issue. It is everything layered on top of it. According to the complaint, borrowers were steered into add‑on products that increased the total cost of their loans, often without clear disclosure or meaningful choice.

This is not a new theory of liability. Courts and regulators have been dealing with similar practices for years. What stands out is how persistent the model is, particularly in lending markets that serve higher-risk consumers.

There is a practical reason for that. Add‑ons can be more profitable and less visible than interest rates. They are harder to compare, easier to bundle, and often misunderstood by borrowers.

From a legal standpoint, these cases tend to turn on disclosure, consent, and whether the borrower was misled about what was optional.

From a broader perspective, they raise a more basic question. If the cost of credit is not transparent at the point of decision, can we really say the transaction is informed?

That question is not going away.

A group of state attorneys general is suing OneMain Financial, saying it tricks borrowers into paying for add-on products and hidden loan costs.

04/15/2026

Scamming Americans out of their hard-earned money is, unfortunately, a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide. Be very careful about either: (1) providing your financial details or (2) sending money to anyone you don't know - especially someone you haven't met in person. If cryptocurrency is involved, be even more suspicious. If you've been scammed, whether or not the law allows you to obtain relief generally depends on HOW the transaction took place. Give our office a call at (412) 378-5854 to learn more.

The United States, Britain and South Korea have joined a crackdown on groups running frauds from Southeast Asia. They have their work cut out.