Shmuel I. Becher of Victoria University of Wellington and Anne-Lise Sibony of UCLouvain; TILEC have written In Search of a Lasting Lightbulb Moment: The Law and Policy of Product Obsolescence. Here's the abstract: Firms frequently employ various strategies that make products obsolete after a relatively short time or limited usage (“product obsolescence”). Early product obsolescence harms […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
The issue as framed by the petitioner, TransUnion, is whether "either Article III or Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 permits a damages class action when the vast majority of the class suffered no actual injury, let alone an injury anything like what the class representative suffered." More at SCOTUSblog.
Here. Excerpt: One reason there may have been so few consumer lawsuits is that it is difficult to prove exactly where and how a person got COVID, especially during a pandemic. And even in the rare case that a consumer can summon the needed proof, he or she would still have to show that the business did […]
Bloomberg mentions her as a possibility, as well as FTC commissioner Rohit Chopra and Patrice Ficklin, the CFPB's Fair Lending Director.
by Jeff Sovern WaPo's report is here and HuffPo's here. Paul Krugman in the Times writes about how the GOP doesn't see real problems like climate change, but in this case they see a problem that doesn't exist. UPDATE: The Hill reports here that McConnell has suggested dropping liability protection and state and local funding […]
David Berman has written A Critique of Consumer Advocacy Against the Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts, 54 Columbia Journal of Law & Social Problems. Here is the abstract: In May 2019, the American Law Institute proposed adopting a Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts. In it, the Restatement’s Reporters suggested a “grand […]
My colleague, Sheldon Evans of St. John's, has written Pandora's Loot Box. Here's the abstract: Virtual worlds are a frontier unlike any other. But as virtual worlds grow exponentially in the internet age, they find more overlap with the real world and the laws that govern it. One such emerging intersection is the advent of […]
by Jeff Sovern Here, though the report on liability is not very detailed and so perhaps it is less bad than I fear. But if not, as I have written in a different context, this is a terrible idea and will lead to more people getting the virus.
Dee Pridgen of Wyoming has written ALI's Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts: Perpetuating a Legal Fiction? 32 Loyola Consumer Law Review No. 3, (2020). Here's the abstract: The American Law Institute’s proposed Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts has undergone a lengthy process of drafts and discussions, but the road to completion has […]
Uri Benoliel of Ramat Gan Law School and Shmuel I. Becher of Victoria University of Wellington have written Termination Without Explanation Contracts. Here is the abstract: Firms routinely terminate their contractual relationship with consumers. During 2019-2020, for example, Facebook terminated 5.4 billion accounts that were supposedly fake; WhatsApp announced that it is terminating 2 million […]