The issue has been getting attention recently and is the subject of The Case for Tipping and Unrestricted Tip-Pooling by law profs Samuel Estreicher and Jonathan Remy Nash. Here is the abstract: Going against the well-established tipping norm in the United States, a growing number of restaurant owners are moving to ban tipping, and instead raise prices, […]
Author Archives: Brian Wolfman
Alexander Ash has written It’s Your Money and We Want It Now: Regulation of the Structured Settlement Factoring Industry in the Era of Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Here is the abstract: Calls for reform in the structured settlement factoring industry have recently grown louder across the nation. However, those calls ring hollow and […]
In 2006, in the federal government's RICO litigation against major players in the tobacco industry, U.S. District Judge Glady Kessler issued an opinion containing over 4,000 findings of facts. She found that the government had shown by overwhelming evidence that the industry had maintained an unlawful racketeering enterprise and had lied about the health effects […]
Read this essay by acting FDA commissioner Stephen Ostroff on what the FDA is doing to get safe and effective generic drugs on the market promptly. The agency's efforts are important because the cost of generic drugs generally is far less than the cost of brand-name drugs. In particular, as Ostroff explains, the entry of a "first […]
Factcheck.org has put together a video to separate truth from fiction in the climate-change debate. To view it, click here or on the embedded video below. Go here to read the organization's full review. You will hear that some of the "facts" denying climate change from politicians, such as Rep. Lamar Smith and Sen. Ted Cruz, are misleading at […]
That's what it took less than two pages for the Supreme Court to say today to the Idaho Supreme Court in James v. City of Boise. Under 42 U.S.C. 1988 and many other similar civil-rights-type fee-shifting statutes, a court "may" "in its discretion" award attorney's fees to the prevailing party. Many years ago, the Supreme Court […]
As one mega-brokerage firm puts it, "[f]aced with mounting pension costs and greater volatility, companies are increasingly offering their current and former employees a critical choice: Take a lump sum payment now or hold on to their pension," which would be paid out periodically over the beneficiary's lifetime. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has put […]
That's the name of this column by consumer reporter David Lazarus.
Looking in particular at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's complaint process, that's the issue addressed by law prof Angela Littwin in Why Process Complaints? Then and Now. Here's the abstract: The creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) established the first comprehensive federal forum for processing consumer complaints about financial products and services. The […]
This essay by David Ropeik (pictured to the right) explains that people often miscalculate health risks. Risk from flu (influenza) is far greater than from measles (particularly for certain age groups). Flu causes a lot of deaths and staggering economic costs, yet vaccination rates remain low. Get a flu shot.