A customer brought a consumer class action against Procter & Gamble over its use of the phrase “Nature Fusion,” along with a picture of an avocado, on certain products’ bottles, claiming it was an unfair and deceptive business practice and false advertising under California law, misleading consumers into thinking the product was natural. A Ninth […]
Author Archives: Adam Pulver
In March 2022, a FINRA panel found that Alpine, a securities broker-dealer, “converted and misused customer funds and securities, engaged in unauthorized trading, charged and paid customers unfair prices in securities transactions, charged customers unreasonable and discriminatory fees, and made an unauthorized capital withdrawal.” FINRA then found that Alpine violated its cease-and-desist order 35,000 times, […]
Shelly Milgram’s employee opened, in Milgram’s name, a credit card with Chase and ran up tens of thousands of dollars in debt–then illegally accessed Milgram’s bank accounts and used them to partially pay off the monthly statements. When the scheme was discovered (with the employee later convicted of fraud), Milgram reported the fraud to Chase […]
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 […]
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 […]