During his fellowship, Cort Carlson jumped right into substantive legal work protecting consumers from deception and civil rights abuses. For example, in his first year at TZ, he joined the team in securing summary judgment finding that Fifth Third Bank violated the Truth in Lending Act by failing to accurately disclose the true cost of its payday loans. He also joined the team in trying the breach of contract claim in the same consumer class action to jury verdict—a rare occurrence. He continued his work challenging deceptive financial practices by successfully briefing an opposition to a motion to dismiss, which the court ultimately denied. His work took on a civil rights dimension when he participated in filing a class action on behalf of Black and Latino home loan borrowers for race discrimination against Navy Federal Credit Union and in being on the team appointed to leadership after cases across the country that challenged the same conduct were consolidated by the court. Cort also participated in drafting a consumer class action complaint challenging Bank of America’s unauthorized account opening practices and is part of the court-appointed leadership team in the now-consolidated case.
Outside of the financial sector, Cort has filed and briefed cases challenging junk fees, deceptive advertising, and data breaches. Notably, Cort is part of the TZ case team that is partnering with the District of Columbia Attorney General in challenging StubHub for charging consumers hidden fees.
Cort has also worked on appellate and amicus matters during his Fellowship. Most notably, in the Ninth Circuit case X v. Bonta, No. 24-271, he participating in drafting an amicus brief with the legal non-profit Asian Americans Advancing Justice in defense of the State of California’s consumer disclosure law requiring social media platforms to disclose whether they are moderating platform content in a way that conforms with their promises to do so.
As part of his Fellowship, Cort spent three months working at Public Justice on its Debtors’ Prison Project. There, he participated in bringing novel constitutional challenges against county jails’ practices of banning in-person family visitation for profit, which was covered by The New Yorker. He also helped bring a case against another county jail for its practice of extracting money from people being released from jail to pay for a shooting range, cotton candy and ice cream machines.
The Fellowship was, in Cort’s words, the “best first legal job out of law school [he] could have imagined.” Unsurprisingly, Cort accepted TZ’s offer to stay on with the firm as an Associate.
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