According to a recent story from Tony Romm and Elizabeth Dwoskin at the Washington Post, “U.S. regulators have met to discuss imposing a record-setting fine against Facebook” for violating a 2011 consent decree that settled charges that Facebook deceived consumers with regard to its privacy policies and practices. In March 2018, the Federal Trade Commission […]
Category Archives: Federal Trade Commission
by Jeff Sovern Regular readers of this blog know that I collect instances of people agreeing to contracts without reading them. Among my examples: Chief Justice Roberts, Judge Posner, Hillary Clinton, and consumer law professors. Now I think we can add FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips to the list, though his remarks are ambiguous enough that […]
by Jeff Sovern Last Thursday, I posted on the blog Republican FTC Commissioners Name Payday Lender Lawyer to Run Consumer Protection Bureau Over Dem Commissioners' Objections. Alan Kaplinsky posted in response A reply to Professor Sovern, in which he wrote that "Jeff’s characterization of Andrew as a “Payday Lender Lawyer” in the title of his blog post […]
by Jeff Sovern The Hill has the story here. Among the confirmed commissioners is Rohit Chopra, formerly of the Consumer Federation of America and the CFPB, and a strong consumer advocate. The other commissioners would be wise to follow his lead on consumer protection matters.
Law360 has the story here. The other current FTC Commissioner, Maureen K. Ohlhausen, has been nominated to the bench and so will also leave soon. The Senate is to vote on four nominees–Joseph J. Simons, Rohit Chopra, Christine S. Wilson and Noah Joshua Phillips–on April 28th; the confirmation vote for a fifth nominee, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, has […]
by Jeff Sovern Last month, the Department of Justice issued a policy that as DOJ describes it in its announcement of the policy, "prohibits the Department of Justice from using its civil enforcement authority to convert agency guidance documents into binding rules." Times coverage is here. What implications does this have for consumer law? Strictly speaking, […]
by Jeff Sovern AccountsRecovery.Net reports on an interview, largely about debt collection, with the Acting Director of the FTC's Consumer Protection Bureau, Thomas Pahl, at a Receivables Management Association conference this week. Some excerpt: “It’s difficult to speak about where the agency is headed given the organization is changing,” Pahl said during his session, adding that […]
So Law360 reports. The nominees are Christine S. Wilson, Senior Vice President for Regulatory and International Affairs at Delta and Noah Joshua Phillips, chief counsel to Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
Law360 has the story here. The FTC has only one other commissioner at the moment, though the president has nominated two other commissioners, Joseph Simons and Rohit Chopra.
WaPo has a report, headlined How robo-callers outwitted the government and completely wrecked the Do Not Call list, reporting that the FTC receives 19,000 complaints per day from people on the Do-Not-Call list about robocallers. The FTC not only does not have the resources to do much about it, but when it tries, its efforts are […]