Here's what the Food and Drug Administration just said about so-called dietary supplements and foods claimed to promote weight loss: If you find yourself making this common New Year’s resolution, know this: many so-called “miracle” weight loss supplements and foods (including teas and coffees) don’t live up to their claims. Worse, they can cause serious […]
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A couple of significant pro-consumer, pro-privacy rulings over the last two weeks of 2014: First, a federal district court in Minnesota rejected the argument that putative class of Target consumers harmed by the retail giant's data breach lacked standing to sue over the breach. As Law360 reports, the court "concluded that the plaintiffs' assertions that […]
Let's kick off the new year with some good news on the CFPB enforcement front: We've been following for a few months now the story of Virginia retail chains that take advantage of servicemembers' transience to trap them in a cycle of debt. (See here for my original discussion and here for a discussion of […]
Today, Public Citizen filed the opening brief in Pele v. Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, a Fourth Circuit appeal testing whether and in what circumstances state-affiliated loan entities can qualify as "arms of the state" and so partake of a state's sovereign immunity from suit. The appeal arises out of the case of Lee Pele, […]
A recent New York Times story about the relationships between consumer-friendly state attorneys general and plaintiffs' lawyers that serve as outside counsel on enforcement cases that the outside lawyers themselves have recommended is worth a read — and a big caveat. The article is informative about how state AGs often need to turn to outside […]
The title of this piece, "When Nonprofit Hospitals Sue Their Poorest Patients," sums it up. The story raises important questions about nonprofit hospitals' social responsibility to low-income patients and highlights the harsh practices of one Missouri hospital that seizes more money from its patients than any other hospital in the state. The results are lawsuits, […]
The Department of Justice's Consumer Protection Branch is looking to hire lawyers to enforce the Nation's consumer laws. And because enforcement of those laws is a frequent topic of this blog, it seemed sensible to post the announcements here. The deadline to apply for these jobs is January 2, 2015. One job announcement is for […]
In a must-read for consumers who value their right to criticize companies they do business with, Techdirt has compiled this list of businesses that employ contract language to try to silence criticism from customers. These companies threaten fines from $2,500 up to a mindboggling $100,000 for customer criticism. Earlier this year, as we've discussed, a […]
In a victory for consumers and the environment, the administration of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will impose a statewide ban on the controversial technique known as hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" for gas. Reuters quotes state health commissioner Howard Zucker: "The potential risks are too great, in fact not even fully known, and relying on […]
The leaked text of a multi-national trade agreement currently under negotiation reveals some troubling implications, explains Public Citizen this week in this press statement and this report. The text at issue, from the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), would apply in fifty nations. As explained in the release: With respect to privacy protections, the leaked […]