On this blog, we talk sometimes about whether disclosure to consumers as opposed to outright prohibtions or restrictions on business conduct (or doing nothing at all) is the appropriate way, under the circumstances, to protect consumers in the marketplace. In any case, and particularly when disclosure or nothing at all is the choice, consumer protection […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
by Brian Wolfman Federal district judge Anita Brody in Philadelphia has preliminarily approved a class-action settlement in a case brought by former NFL football players against the NFL. The players claim that the NFL is responsible for their serious concussion-related injuries (and concussion-related injuries that they will suffer in the future). Judge Brody's 21-page preliminary […]
In United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), the Supreme Court held section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional as a violation of equal protection and due process principles. Section 3 said that for the purpose of interpreting federal law, "marriage" must be construed as the legal union of one man […]
Herman Schwartz has written How Consumers are Getting Screwed by Court-Enforced Arbitration in The Nation. (Hat tip to Paul Bland)
Go here or click on the embedded video below.
The CFPB has started hiring for its next class of Louis D. Brandeis Honors lawyers, who will begin work in fall 2015. Here's how the agency describes the positions: The Louis D. Brandeis program is a two-year fellowship designed to provide exceptional law students and recent graduates with early, substantive opportunities to use and develop their […]
The June 17 edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) included an article on an “emotional contagion” study conducted for Facebook. For the study, researchers randomly chose more than 680,000 Facebook users and altered their news feeds so that some saw fewer positive posts and others saw fewer negative posts. […]
This week, New York's highest court has confirmed the right of towns to ban fracking. Though legally a case about the power of localities versus the preemptive effect of state law, the result is that opponents of fracking have a powerful tool — local ordinances — to prevent fracking in their communities. (Fracking is a […]
This week, the Seventh Circuit reversed the denial of class certification in Zanetti v. IKO Mfg., a case about roof tiles marketed with the allegedly false claim that they met a certain industry standard. The district court denied class certification — in the words of the Seventh Circuit — "under a mistaken belief that 'commonality […]