by Paul Alan Levy This past spring, Twitter garnered significant attention, and widespread praise, for a lawsuit it brought against the Trump Administration this past spring to block enforcement of an administrative summons seeking to identify the owners of a Twitter account purporting to reflect criticisms by current employees in Customs and Border Control. The […]
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The Wall Street Journal, reporting on data compiled by the National Center for State Courts, reports that State restrictions, increasing cost, and a long campaign by businesses have discouraged plaintiffs from filing tort suits. Tort cases (primarily auto, medical malpractice, and product liability cases) declined from 16% of civil filings in state courts in 1993 […]
In recent years, federal courts have been addressing corporate class-action defendants' claims that the federal class-action rule (Rule 23) contains an rigorous "ascertainability" requirement — a supposed need for the plaintiffs to show, at the certification stage (rather than at the remedy phase), that they have a crackerjack method for identifying the class members with […]
Last Friday marked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's 6th birthday. It celebrated with a report describing what it considers the agency's top 6 accomplishments.These topics are described below, and the specifics are provided after the jump (with links to further information). 1. Our actions have resulted in nearly $12 billion in relief for more than 29 million harmed […]
In Competitive Enterprise Institute v. DOT, by a 2-1 vote, the D.C. Circuit has upheld a Department of Transportation rule banning use of e-cigarettes on commercial passenger flights. The main question was whether Congress's 1987 law making it illegal "to smoke" on certain commercial flights justified a recent regulatory ban on using (or, some might say, […]
This article by AP medical journalist Carla Johnson explains that Trump is not simply letting the Affordable Care Act fail (as he has occasionally pledged to do), but taking affirmative steps to harm the Act by making it harder to sign up for coverage. As the article explains, these actions could, in turn, destabilize markets in […]
The independence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's director is under challenge in the D.C. Circuit. And the agency's arbitration rule is under siege from corporate America and in Congress. Meanwhile, the agency — because of its independence — keeps very busy doing the work Congress assigned to it. To see what the CFPB is up to, review […]
Reuter's reports that, "[a]s part of its review of Amazon's agreement to buy Whole Foods, the Federal Trade Commission is looking into allegations that Amazon misleads customers about its pricing discounts, according to a source close to the probe. The FTC is probing a complaint brought by the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which looked at […]
Discussing a resolution introduced by two Republican Congressmen to kill the CFPB's arbitration rule, Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell observes: "For some reason, though, the idea of giving consumers the choice to participate in a court of law — a right enshrined in the Seventh Amendment — leaves some GOP legislators quaking in their loafers." […]
by Paul Alan Levy Two decisions were issued late yesterday in cases involving the procedures for adjudicating subpoenas seeking to identify anonymous Internet speakers who are accused of actionable speech. An appeals court in California embraced most elements of the Dendrite / Cahill test for deciding whether the plaintiff in such a case should be […]