by Paul Alan Levy I wrote recently about a letter from an HHS lawyer, Dale Berkley, that appeared to threaten a blogger with a lawsuit for defamation because the blogger had published a mock interview with a an HHS official which, the demand letter said, could have misled readers into believing that the official had […]
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by Paul Alan Levy The last time I blogged about Med Express, the eBay seller that brought a defamation suit against two eBay customers for leaving truthful and mildly critical feedback, then apologized and blamed its lawyer for filing a different lawsuit from the one it wanted to file, we had just gone to trial […]
That's the topic of The Deterrent Effect of Tort Law: Evidence from Medical Malpractice Reform by profs Zenon Zabinski and Bernard Black. Here is the abstract: A principal goal of tort law is to deter negligent behavior, but there is limited empirical evidence on whether it does so. We study that question for medical malpractice […]
As the Washington Post reports, a proposal pending before the Senate would require the IRS to turn unpaid tax bills over to private debt collectors. The proposal would, in the Post's words, "reviv[e] a program that has previously led to complaints of harassment and has not saved taxpayers money." The leading proponent is Democrat Chuck […]
Here. A lot of it is about Omri Ben-Shahar's and Carl Schneider's new book, More Than You Wanted to Know: The Failure of Mandated Disclosure. I'm still reading the book's introduction, but so far it looks very good.
by Andrew Selbst, guest blogger A few weeks ago, the FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed a new “net neutrality” plan which is clearly anything but. While the new proposal would prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from blocking competitors’ websites outright, it would also permit ISPs to make agreements with services such as Netflix for internet […]
From DOT's press announcement: The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) today announced that General Motors (GM) has agreed to pay a record $35 million civil penalty and to take part in unprecedented oversight requirements as a result of findings from NHTSA’s timeliness investigation regarding the Chevrolet Cobalt and the automaker’s […]
by Paul Alan Levy In mid-2009, Jennifer Choi posted a scathing Yelp review of a Phoenix repair shop called ToyoMotors, contending that her car was diagnosed as needing repairs that other shops assured her were unnecessary, and that its fees were excessive by comparison with its competitors. Four years later, ToyoMotors went on the offensive. […]
As we've discussed before on the blog (see, for instance, here and here), in 2012 an online retailer called KlearGear tried to extort $3500 from its customer John Palmer because his wife Jen criticized the company online; when John refused to pay, KlearGear reported the supposed “debt” to the credit agencies, ruining John’s credit for […]
We've written before about the FCC's most recent (and troubling) proposal for net neutrality. Now comes this letter to FCC Chair Tom Wheeler, signed by the four top House Republicans, opposing any attempt to reclassify the internet in such a way as to promote net neutrality. Doing so, the letter argues, "threatens to slow job creation […]