We've covered the Target data breach and posted pieces (here, for instance) suggesting what consumers can do to mitigate the risks from that breach and others like it. Now, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a consumer advisory of its own on the topic. The agency has also issued a press release, which I'm […]
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OSHA has proposed making public workplace illness and injury reports, but employers are opposed and have asked their lawyers to try to nix the proposal. Read Jenna Greene's article here.
An antitrust dispute between two pharmaceutical companies over the licensing and pricing of HIV drugs was the setting for a significant ruling from the Ninth Circuit this week regarding discrimination against gay jurors. Applying heightened scrutiny to LGBT jurors, the court held that using a peremptory strike to dismiss a gay juror violates the constitution. […]
[Update: David and I were clearly on the same page this morning — by the time I finished writing this post, he had already just posted on the same case. I'll leave my thoughts up as a complement to his.] In an opinion sympathetic in tone to the problems of ordinary consumers but ultimately unable […]
by Brian Wolfman According to this Associated Press story, in 2012, the Vermont Attorney General sued a company called Vermints under Vermont’s consumer protection law alleging that Vermints had mislabeled its mints “Vermont’s All-Natural Mints” (my emphasis). What was the AG’s beef with the label? According to the suit, the company is Massachusetts-based and the […]
One might have expected this, but here’s a study to back it up: a college applicant’s social network use can play a significant role in admissions. According to a study by Kaplan (as reported in this New York Times article from November), almost a third of 381 college admission officers surveyed said they “visited an […]
We've covered extensively the law and policy fight against obesity and noted that there's been some (barely) measurable progress recently. That's the theme of this article from The Economist. Here's an excerpt: The overweight American, slurping a bucket of soda in his car, is an international stereotype. Thankfully, fewer Americans fit the mould. Obesity rates among […]
Do you think that some food marketers (mis)label junky foods to try to make them seem healthy? Jennifer Pomeranz does, and she's written A Comprehensive Strategy to Overhaul FDA Authority for Misleading Food Labels to explain how, in her view, the Food and Drug Administration can make food labels less misleading, consistent with the First […]
We've posted here and here about how consumers can try to avoid harm from the Target (and similar) data breaches. Perhaps the best medicine is putting a security freeze on your credit report. Here, Michelle Singletary describes that process in some detail.
Those are the subjects of Cost-Benefit Analysis of Financial Regulation: Case Studies and Implications, by law professor John Coates. Here is the abstract: Some members of Congress, the D.C. Circuit, and legal academia are promoting a particular, abstract form of cost-benefit analysis for financial regulation: judicially enforced quantification. How would CBA work in practice, if […]