Yvonne Mack received a debt collection notice, referring to a US Bank credit card she had held. She was uncertain that the debt amount was accurate, and thus a submitted a request for validation of the debt via certified mail. She received no response. She then received a second debt collection notice. Confused, she went […]
Author Archives: Adam Pulver
The FTC has announced the filing and resolution of an action against Amazon, arising out of claims that the company wrongfully retained voice recordings and geolocation information of Alexa users, allowed Amazon employees to access voice information, failed to delete children’s information at the request of parents, and retained children’s personal information longer than necessary. […]
Yesterday, the CFPB announced that it has reached a settlement of a lawsuit filed in 2020 against Citizens Bank. The agency alleged that the bank failed to properly manage and respond to customers’ credit card disputes and fraud claims. The settlement includes a $9 million civil penalty, and an agreement that the bank will fix […]
In a 94-page opinion issued after a lengthy bench trial, a Massachusetts District Judge has found the “Northeast Alliance” between American Airlines and JetBlue, by which the two airlines coordinated their flights out of New York and Boston, to violate the Sherman Act. An appeal is sure to follow. But the main takeaway from the […]
In 2021, in the case of AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTC, the Supreme Court held that section 13(b) of the FTCA does not, contrary to a decades-long practice, allow the FTC to obtain equitable monetary judgments via court proceedings without first going through administrative proceedings as required to obtain such relief under section 19. […]
The Department of Transportation today announced it will be issuing an NPRM to require airlines provide compensation and reimbursement of expenses when passengers are affected by “controllable” cancellation or significant delays of their flights. DOT notes that practices among carriers currently varies, and airlines use different definitions of what constitutes “controllable” flight disruptions. DOT also […]
The past two decades have seen the growth of Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing programs– which allow property owners to finance the costs of energy-efficiency-related improvements, secured by the property itself and paid as an addition to an owner’s property tax bill. In the residential market, there has been a concern that these loans […]
In November 2022, the FTC brought a lawsuit against the operators of a telemarketing debt relief scheme based in Tennessee. Operating under a variety of trade names, the network had tricked consumers to part with tens of millions of dollars based on false promises to eliminate or substantially reduce credit card debt. This week, the […]
“Essential oils” have become very popular over the past few years, in part due to confusion that, in this context, “essential” does not mean “indispensable or necessary,” but rather refers to the means by which they are derived from plants. An essential oil company called Young Living had marketed its products as being “therapeutic-grade,” and […]
Forty-six states, D.C., and Guam sued Facebook for violating antitrust laws based on its acquisitions of several competitors, and restrictions on developers of apps that linked to Facebook. The district court dismissed the action, and the D.C. Circuit today unanimously affirmed. In so doing, the court held that the doctrine of laches does apply to […]