An overview, from Public Citizen's press release: Corporations and their lawyers are pushing the idea that consumers who were duped by misrepresentations into buying products or overpaying for products have suffered “no injury.” The new report (PDF), “The Fiction of the ‘No-Injury’ Class Action,” examines that claim, testing its validity as a matter of fact […]
Author Archives: Scott Michelman
Reuters reports: Eating processed meats like hot dogs, sausages and bacon can cause colorectal cancer in humans, and red meat is also a likely cause of the disease, World Health Organization (WHO) experts said. The review by WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), released on Monday, said additionally that there was some link […]
The New York Times reports: In a federal lawsuit, a group of women are challenging industry guidelines that say it is “inappropriate” to pay a woman more than $10,000 for her eggs. The women say the $10,000 limit amounts to illegal price-fixing, and point out that there is no price restriction on the sale of human […]
The NYT points out that even a hike of a few percent on the ultra-rich could yield massive returns. For instance: If the tax increase were limited to just the 115,000 households in the top 0.1 percent, with an average income of $9.4 million, a 40 percent tax rate would produce $55 billion in extra […]
Although none of the A-list stars in the conversation are living paycheck to paycheck, Hollywood (led by Jennifer Lawrence, one of the highest paid actresses in the world, according to Forbes) is taking note of the differences between pay for men and women — and that it extends to high-paying as well as low-paying jobs. […]
From the NYT: The recall of exploding Takata airbags, one of the largest and most complex auto recalls in the nation’s history, may grow even larger. On Thursday, officials from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the top federal auto safety regulator, said it had expanded its investigation of the defect beyond the airbags situated […]
In two cases today (one of them litigated by Public Citizen), the Fourth Circuit held that the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) is not entitled to claim Pennsylvania's sovereign immunity because PHEAA is not an arm of the state. In fact, PHEAA is effectively an independent business, which holds, services or guarantees more than $100 billion […]
As regulators and policymakers consider how to respond to VW's emissions scandal — in which the company programmed its vehicles to emit less during tests than under normal conditions (for our prior discussions, see here, here, and here) — one angle they might consider for future reform is copyright. Sen. Ron Wyden opined last week […]
In wake of last week's announcement by New York restaurateur Danny Meyer that he would be eliminating tipping at his restaurants (and instead building a service charge into the menu prices), dueling op-eds in the Times and Post over the past week debate the merits of tipping as a custom and means of paying workers. In the Times, Saru […]
… reports fivethirtyeight.com. For instance: During the strong labor market of the mid-1990s, only 1 in 5 minimum-wage workers was still earning minimum wage a year later. Today, that number is nearly 1 in 3, according to my analysis of government survey data. There has been a similar rise in the number of people staying […]