NPR reporter Steve Henn (who has covered both economics and technology) conducted an experiment: he asked a couple computer experts to follow his internet traffic for a week and see how much they could learn. The answer? A whole lot. They ended up knowing so much about Henn and his movements that they could have […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
When a group of class-action objectors appealed the settlement of the privacy case against Facebook for (among other things) the unlawful use of minors’ images for advertising without parental consent, class counsel sought to impose on each objector-appellant an appeal bond of $32,000. (For more background, see here.) One of class counsel’s arguments was that […]
As we've recounted, this is the case of the company that tried to litigate in secret and under a pseudonym in challenging the Consumer Product Safety Commission's decision to post a product report on its product safety database, saferproducts.gov. The district court granted the seal and permission to use a pseudonym, and at the same […]
Key holdings of today's 5-4 decision: corporations are entitled to protection under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act; requiring closely-held corporations to pay for contraception despite their owners' have sincere religious objections is a substantial burden on religious freedom; government's program is not narrowly tailored. However, the majority opinion suggests that the Department of Health […]
As we hit the middle of the U.S. major-league baseball season, I wanted to update our readers on the latest baseball-related (but not baseball-inherent) tort. As any major-league baseball consumer knows, at many major-league stadiums, between innings, fans are bombarded with hot dogs (and/or t-shirts) propelled into the stands from large bazooka-style air guns. At […]
So says the Times. Not so much as before the Great Recession, and they're called non-qualified mortgages now, and maybe you can't get so-called "liar's loans" or negative amortization loans, but those with weak credit ratings can get mortgages again.
We posted yesterday about the New York Court of Appeals' decision invalidating the New York City Board of Health's ban on the sale of large sugary drinks. The Board of Health targeted sugar because it believed that the best science shows that excessive sugar consumption is at the root of the obesity epidemic. There's a […]
For those of you who have been following the saga of Palmer v. KlearGear (see here for a summary), a big development this week: On Wednesday afternoon in Salt Lake City, after hearing testimony from the plaintiffs John and Jen Palmer about the damages they suffered as a result of their ordeal, the judge awarded […]
Read this piece by law professor and dean Erwin Chemerinsky.
The New York Court of Appeals — New York's highest court — today threw out the New York City Board of Health's ban on the sale of large sugary drinks. The ban was a significant component of former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's fight against obesity. Read the court's 4-2 decision and Michael Grynbaum's article about […]

