In 2015, Congress amended the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) to exempt calls made to collect a debt owed to or guaranteed by the federal government from the TCPA’s ban on unwanted robocalls to cell phones. Last week, in a case called American Association of Political Consultants v. FCC, the U.S. Court of Appeals for […]
Author Archives: Scott Nelson
In its latest foray into the poorly drafted provisions of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Supreme Court unanimously decided today in Obduskey v. McCarthy & Holthus LLP that entities who engage in nonjudicial foreclosure either regularly or as their principal business are not (for that reason) "debt collectors" within the meaning of the […]
In an en banc decision late last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a San Francisco ordinance requiring ads for sugar-sweetened beverages to warn of the link between overconsumption and obesity violates the First Amendment. The decision indicates that the Supreme Court's decision last term in National Institute of […]
It could have been a routine order directing arbitration in a commercial dispute no one beyond the parties would likely care about. Instead, Judge William Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts used the occasion of a dispute between two companies about the meaning of their arbitration agreement to deliver an […]
Alison Frankel of Reuters reports that the Delaware Chancery Court has held that Delaware corporations lack authority to include in their charters "forum selection clauses" applicable to federal securities fraud claims asserted by shareholders. Put more simply, the ruling limits corporate power to tell shareholders where they have to file their claims. As Frankel's article […]
The vaping industry's First Amendment challenge to FDA e-cigarette marketing rules remains pending in the DC Circuit, where it awaits decision following oral arguments this past September. But federal officials aren't the only ones trying to regulate the industry's practices: States also regulate vape shops operating within their jurisdictions. And last week, state regulations also […]
When a federal district court certifies, refuses to certify, or decertifies a class, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f) gives a party 14 days to ask a court of appeals for permission to appeal the ruling. But what if a party seeks permission outside the 14-day window because some circumstance prevented action within 14 days or […]
The Supreme Court held long ago, in a case generally referred to as "American Pipe," that if the courts refuse to allow a case to go forward as a class action, all members of the class have the chance to bring suit to pursue their claims individually, even if the statute of limitations has expired, […]
In case you missed the punchline of Jeff Sovern's post on the CFPB's annual report, the news is not the report itself (which conscientiously recites the CFPB's actions between February and September 2017, before Mick Mulvaney was appointed Acting Director following Richard Cordray's departure), but the cover letter, in which Mulvaney proposes that Congress gut […]
In an opinion issued this morning, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned key provisions of a Federal Communiciations Commission ruling addressing the scope of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act's prohibition on the use of automated dialing devices to make unconsented-to calls to cell phones. In what may prove the most […]