The NYT reports today: Adding another entry to Wall Street’s growing rap sheet, five big banks have agreed to pay more than $5 billion and plead guilty to multiple crimes related to manipulating foreign currencies and interest rates, federal and state authorities announced on Wednesday. The Justice Department forced four of the banks — Citigroup, […]
Author Archives: Scott Michelman
Updating an earlier complaint to the FTC, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and Center for Digital Democracy charge that Google engages in false and deceptive advertising by marketing its YouTube Kids as appropriate for children under five despite containing material about child suicide, unsafe behaviors such as playing with matches and tasting battery acid, and […]
The Japanese airbag-manufacturer Takata announced this week it would expand its recall of defective airbags to up to 34 million vehicles. The New York Times reports that six deaths and over a hundred injuries have resulted from the flaw, which can cause the airbags to explode violently on deployment, spraying metal at passengers. As we’ve […]
Bloomberg reports that Harold Hamm, billionaire CEO of oil company Continental Resources, tried to get University of Oklahoma scientists fired for their research. This report comes just a few weeks after Oklahoma's government confirmed that the hundreds of earthquakes the state has experienced in recent years are, in fact, caused by oil and gas operations […]
When one comes across a case called Abdelfattah v. DHS alleging a pattern of law enforcement and immigration-authority harassment against a Jordanian national, the Fair Credit Reporting Act is usually not the first remedy that comes to mind. But in the D.C. Circuit's decision in that case this past Friday, an FCRA claim is the […]
In the complaint, A.G. Karl Racine says the defendants, a married couple named Hofgard who control at least 28 entities, renovated and sold 15 homes since 2013 that had not been properly permitted or inspected. In one instance, according to the complaint, the shoddy work caused the partial collapse of a neighboring property's wall. "They […]
If you haven't seen analysis of the deadly Amtrak crash in Philadelphia this week, read this agonizing story from the New York Times. Amtrak was quite close to having a system that could have prevented the disaster, but "the system, which was tantalizingly close to being operational, was delayed by budgetary shortfalls, technical hurdles and […]
Yesterday, Brian flagged an article about courts' distortions of mootness doctrine in the context of Rule 68. Fortunately, help is on the way (at least in some circuits). For instance, the Second Circuit held this week (in a case in which Public Citizen filed an amicus brief) that an unaccepted Rule 68 offer does not […]
We wrote yesterday about the failure of fast-track trade authority to proceed in the Senate. Today saw a reversal of fortune, with fast-track moving ahead along with two other bills meant to temper Senate opposition. The Washington Post reports. Also worth a read on the subject are two articles this week covering the cases for […]
Several items of interest on the Hill this week: -We've recently discussed the (fortunately, failed) plan to delay protections for military personnel against predatory lending. Well, the fight isn't over — a bill to block the protections has been introduced in the House. Huffington Post has the story. -Also troubling: a discussion draft of a […]