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 […]
Author Archives: Paul Levy
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 […]
by Paul Alan Levy Last summer, I blogged about trademark claims threatened by Charles Carreon, a California lawyer with a notorious past who maintains a private practice out of his home in Arizona. He had threatened suit against an anonymous blogger for making fun of Carreon at a web site using the domain name charles-carreon.com, […]
by Paul Alan Levy The Virginia Supreme Court has summarily reversed a preliminary injunction requiring the author of a consumer review criticizing a Washington DC contractor to revise her statements about the contractor. We filed a petition for review arguing that the injunction was an impermissible prior restraint, in addition to violating the common law […]
by Paul Alan Levy I am pleased to note that the parties to the defamation action in Steubenville, about which I blogged earlier this month, have resolved the matter in the very sensible manner to which my blog post pointed: the young man whose nasty behavior spurred much of the commentary was allowed to apologize […]
by Paul Alan Levy This morning's Washington Post carries a report on a scam operation preying on non-profits, based in Boca Raton — the scammers lure the credulous by using the name of a famous news personality, promising priceless exposure on PBS, then charge $23,400 for the privilege of having a short film created for […]
by Paul Alan Levy Today we have joined forces with the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia to seek appellate review of the preliminary injunction recently entered by a trial judge in Fairfax County, Virginia, requiring Jane Perez to make two changes in reviews of a Washington D.C. contractor named Christopher Dietz that she had […]
by Paul Alan Levy The death of Robert Bork today has revived the old debate about the defeat of his nomination to the Supreme Court, but I am sorry to see many of the ordinarily reliable sources missing the boat in their discussions. The New York Times, for example, talks about how liberals opposed him […]
by Paul Alan Levy Earlier this month, Brian Wolfman and I both wrote about an impending preliminary injunction hearing in a libel suit over a consumer's review of a local contractor who, she said, had botched his work on her home. The trial judge largely denied relief, but orally ordered the homeowner to revise her […]