by Jeff Sovern Those who use our casebook may recall the note about R.J. Reynolds advertising that its Winston cigarettes don't have additives. In the new edition, it's at pages 92-93. The casebook reports that Winston's sales increased by 9% as a a result of the ads, and that the FTC brought a case against Reynolds […]
Category Archives: Federal Trade Commission
James C. Cooper of George Mason has written The Perils of Excessive Discretion: The Elusive Meaning of Unfairness in Section 5 of the FTC Act. Here's the abstract: Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act gives the FTC an undefined mandate to prosecute "unfair methods of competition." For nearly 100 years, the Commission […]
by Deepak Gupta I thought readers might be interested in a new appeal that my firm is handling in the Ninth Circuit, Moran v. The Screening Pros, concerning the state and federal regulation of background-check companies. You can read our opening brief here. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission have weighed in with an amicus […]
Suddenly, there's a lot going on the in the world of debt collection regulation. On the heels of yesterday's announcement by the FTC of a huge debt-collection settlement (discussed in the post below), the CFPB is announcing today that it will use its UDAAP authority to regulate the collection practices of banks. “It doesn’t matter […]
Here. When consumers see celibrities endorse products on TV, they are likely to believe that the celebrities are being paid. Do consumers have the same reaction to tweets endorsing things? Should celebrities disclose that when they are paid for tweets?
On Thursday, the FTC and CFPB held a joint roundtable titled Life of a Debt: Data Integrity in Debt Collection. Journalist Fred Williams has a report at the Taking Charge blog. An except: At Thursday's meeting, [debt buyer and industry association president Richard] Munroe and other debt buyers didn't repeat the argument the collection industry […]
Here. The report addresses issues of dispute resolution (e.g., for unauthorized charges or fraud), security, and privacy, among others.
The Times report is here. An excerpt: The messages, which typically promise gift cards to national chain stores or other prizes, are sent to random phone numbers and usually direct recipients to a Web site where they are asked for personal information like Social Security numbers or credit card numbers, agency officials said. Rarely, if […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. An excerpt: As with the mortgage cases, the investigation focuses on the banks' poor paperwork and their weak tracking of the debts. When they sold delinquent credit card debt to the buyers, often at only a few cents on the dollar, they allegedly failed to provide them with the evidence that […]
Here. According to the report, Ramirez was an intellectual property lawyer before joining the FTC. It's not clear how much expertise she had in consumer law before becoming a commissioner.