by Paul Alan Levy I have blogged a few times about the libel suit brought by Washington, DC contractor Christopher Dietz against one of his customers, Jane Perez, who posted on Angie’s List and Yelp unfavorable reviews of his work on her newly purchased condo and included an assertion that, after their contractual relationship broke […]
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Here is the groups' press release: New Report Examines Both the Promise and the Potential Dangers of the New Financial Marketplace Leading Reform Groups Call for New Regulations to Protect Consumers from Unfair and Discriminatory “Big Data” Practices, Groups File Report with the White House “Big Data” Review Proceeding Washington, DC: U.S. PIRG Education Fund […]
Public Citizen was in court Monday arguing the case of Vera Scroggins, who has been protesting and documenting the damage caused by fracking the Marcellus Shale in northeastern Pennsylvania. A few months ago, she was hit with an injunction barring her from any property that fracking company Cabot Oil and Gas owns, or to which […]
That's the title of this thought-provoking piece in The Hill by Public Citizen President Rob Weissman about the amicus brief filed this week by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the class action over the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon spill. The Chamber supports BP — against small U.S. businesses — in trying to […]
As we've discussed, briefing is underway before the Ninth Circuit in an appeal regarding the settlement of a class action against Facebook (Fraley v. Facebook) for using its members' images for advertising without their consent — including the images of minors without their parents' consent. In a related development, yesterday the same judge in the […]
As reported here, "the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have updated their previous estimates of health care-associated infections through the two reports, one of which is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, NEJM and details 2011 hospital infection estimates from a survey of hospitals in 10 states." Extrapolating from the data […]
In LaCrosse, Wisconsin, a disproportionately large percentage of the population have advance medical directives for dealing with end-of-life care, reports NPR's Planet Money. It's a cultural thing, not a government mandate: people there are just comfortable talking about and planning for their own deaths. LaCrosse is also notable for having the lowest health-care spending in […]
by Paul Alan Levy When I first read Judge Kozinski’s decision for a majority of a panel of the Ninth Circuit, holding that Cindy Lee Garcia, who has received death threats because her role in the movie Innocence of Muslims makes her appear to have cast serious aspersions on the prophet Mohammed, could assert her […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has released what it calls a "data point" on payday lendingAf. It's a small study based on data that the CFPB obtained from payday lenders in conjunction with the agency's supervisory authority over those lenders. The data indicate that many payday borrowers are habitual payday borrowers. After the jump are […]
As our friends at Public Justice explain, A lot of advocates for forced arbitration like to make a big deal out of how generally corporations pay most of the arbitration fees (that can be pretty expensive), rather than sticking those on the typical worker or consumer. . . . But the thing is, on those […]