In an illuminating piece today entitled "How a small White House agency stalls life-saving regulations," Reuters explains how regulatory delay — chiefly on the part of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — costs lives. The examples cited, including worker-safety, environmental protection, and auto-safety rules, are poignant and powerful. (One example highlighted […]
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In an op-ed in today's New York Times, Yale sociology professor Frederick Wherry argues that "[t]he United States government could put billions of dollars back into the pockets of [pay-day loan borrowers] by fixing a small regulatory problem and allowing banks to get into the business of small loans." The op-ed it here.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau yesterday released its latest monthly consumer complaints snapshot, which highlights credit card complaints. Consumers’ most frequent credit card-related complaints were about incurring late fees and credit report problems due to confusing payment processing schedules and difficulty disputing bill inaccuracies. This month’s snapshot also highlights trends seen in complaints coming from […]
Law prof Nicole Negowetti has written Food Labeling Litigation: Exposing Gaps in the FDA's Resources and Regulatory Authority. Here is the abstract: Since 2011, consumer advocacy groups and plaintiffs have filed more than 150 food labeling class action lawsuits against food and beverage companies. According to a recent study, the number of these consumer protection class […]
The Hill reports: The Librarian of Congress on Tuesday clarified that researchers can tinker with software embedded in cars to investigate security flaws without running afoul of copyright law. The decision was handed down from the Copyright Office as part of a triennial review that exempts certain activity from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA), […]
An overview, from Public Citizen's press release: Corporations and their lawyers are pushing the idea that consumers who were duped by misrepresentations into buying products or overpaying for products have suffered “no injury.” The new report (PDF), “The Fiction of the ‘No-Injury’ Class Action,” examines that claim, testing its validity as a matter of fact […]
by Paul Alan Levy The Washington Post reports this morning that Yelp has begun, on an experimental basis, to show a warning sign when a restaurant has been visited by local inspectors and received an especially low food safety score.
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Reuters reports: Eating processed meats like hot dogs, sausages and bacon can cause colorectal cancer in humans, and red meat is also a likely cause of the disease, World Health Organization (WHO) experts said. The review by WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), released on Monday, said additionally that there was some link […]
by Paul Alan Levy New Jersey resident Nadiya Oliver was deeply frustrated by her experience with an Illinois company called Fertility Bridges, which sells services connecting couples that are unable to conceive a child on their own with women who are ready to donate their eggs in return for financial assistance with the resulting burdens. […]