Law professor Diana Sax has written Dietary Supplements Are Not All Safe and Not All Food: How the Low Cost of Dietary Supplements Preys on the Consumer. Here is the abstract: Dietary supplements are regulated as food, even though the safety and efficacy of some supplements are unknown. These products are often promoted as ‘natural’. […]
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…is the title of an NPR report this morning discussing what happens what experimenters taped off a portion of consumers' grocery carts and labeled it "fruits and vegetables." The results tell us as much about marketing and the power of suggestion as they do about how health-conscious grocery stores might try to nudge their consumers. […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced yesterday: Today the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) took action against the nation’s two largest debt buyers and collectors for using deceptive tactics to collect bad debts. The Bureau found that Encore Capital Group and Portfolio Recovery Associates bought debts that were potentially inaccurate, lacking documentation, or unenforceable. Without […]
On Saturday, we linked to Jeff Gelles's final consumer column for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Here is his final blog post.
Below are recent announcements about the work of the Department of Justice Consumer Protection Branch: September 3, 2015 – Genzyme Corporation to Pay $32.5 Million to Resolve Criminal Liability Relating to Seprafilm August 27, 2015 – Peruvian Man Charged with Leading Conspiracy to Defraud and Extort Spanish-Speaking Consumers through Call Centers August 17, 2015 – […]
Well, a judge has refused to certify an injunctive class based on “natural” deception where the company changed its practices in response to a CLRA notice letter, prior to the lawsuit. Most courts will hold that this moots an injunctive relief claim (incorrectly, in my opinion, because I don’t trust food companies not to […]
In Rodriguez v. Sony Computer, a consumer sued Sony for keeping his personal information that he entered on his PlayStation past the one-year limit provided in the federal Video Privacy Protection Act, and sharing that information between Sony entities. (The Ninth Circuit provides interesting historical context for the VPPA: "The Act was promulgated in 1988 […]
The Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act, as implemented by a Federal Reserve Board regulation, limits debit card interchange fees in many debit-card transactions. Interchange fees are per-transaction fees imposed by debit-card issuing banks on merchants each time a consumer uses a debit card. The regulation went into effect in October 2011. The idea of the […]
Consumer reporter Michele Singletary has penned this article entitled In New York, good riddance to a questionable hiring practice. Singletary explains that "[f]ederal law allows employment credit checks under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. It requires employers to get an applicant’s or employee’s permission before pulling his or her history. But really, if you want […]
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act mandates that the CFPB conduct a study on the use of pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer financial markets. The Dodd-Frank Act specifically prohibits the use of arbitration clauses in mortgage contracts. And it gives the Bureau the power to issue regulations on the use of arbitration […]