by Paul Alan Levy The decision posted this morning by the Michigan Court of Appeals in Thomas Cooley Law School v. Doe is a victory for the Doe defendant, who gets the reversal that he sought, but is a mixed blessing for anonymous Internet speakers in future cases. A unanimous Court of Appeals decided that […]
Author Archives: Paul Levy
In a 6-3 ruling today, the Supreme Court held in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons that the first sale doctrine, which fosters the creation of a secondary market in used copies of copyrighted works by forbidding infringement claims based on the sale or purchase of copies of copyrighted works, applies even if the copyrighted […]
by Paul Alan Levy At Monday's hearing on the our motion to vacate the preliminary injunction against Majed Moughni to shut down his criticism of the proposed settlement of a lawsuit over McDonald’s sale of haram meat that had been advertised as halal, Judge Kathleen Macdonald agreed to both prongs of the relief we had […]
by Paul Alan Levy A status conference was held today in connection with Maged Moughni’s motion to vacate the impermissible prior restraint that Judge Kathleen McDonald issued a month ago, forbidding Moughni to discuss in public the class action lawsuit brought against McDonald’s for selling haram Chicken McNuggets that had been advertised as halal, or […]
The Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue ("TACD") a coalition of consumer organizations in both Europe and North America, has fired a shot across the bow of both the Obama Administration and the leadership of the EU, warning that "improving trade" through the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership ("TTIP") should not be a smokescreen for watering down […]
by Paul Alan Levy Our experience at Public Citizen has been that objectors to proposed class action settlements can often expect a hostile reception. Both named plaintiffs and defendants – and their lawyers — generally have a common stake in getting the settlement approved, and they have developed a relationship with the judge already. The […]
by Paul Alan Levy Donald Trump consistently gets press by filing suits that show his thin skin about being criticized, but he gets less coverage for threats on which he never follows through. A couple of months ago, his lawyer Alan Garten threatened to file a "major, multi-million dollar lawsuit" against Angelo Carusone for the […]
by Paul Alan Levy Here at the Consumer Law and Policy blog, we worry about the chilling impact of both lawsuits against consumers’ speech and heavy-handed cease-and-desist letters demanding the cessation of such speech, on consumers’ ability to use the comment on business. We regularly discuss these situations, and at Public Citizen we often represent […]
by Paul Alan Levy The Times reports that the NAACP filed an amicus brief supporting the soft-drink industry in its opposition to the New York City rules barring super-sized sugary drinks. It is surely not a coincidence that the NAACP gets donations from Coke, as does its New York State Conference, which filed the brief). […]
by Paul Alan Levy I often write in this space about baseless lawsuits brought by businesses to suppress criticism, although at the same time I have acknowledged that, sometimes, litigation may be a sound response to baseless attacks that are having a genuine untoward impact on reputation. In this interesting blog post on a web […]