That's the question addressed by law professor Linda Simard in her article A View from Within the Fortune 500: An Empirical Study of Negative Value Class Actions and Deterrence. Here is the abstract: This paper takes a look inside the Fortune 500 to analyze the deterrent effect of negative value class actions. The study focuses […]
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Guest post by Daniel Colbert (2L, Georgetown Law) How does the shutdown affect consumers? The short answer is that the shutdown likely won’t hurt consumers as much as it will hurt government employees, Head Start students, and panda-cam enthusiasts, but, still, it will put a significant damper on the government’s ability to protect consumers. Here […]
by Paul Alan Levy One of the worst things that can happen to libel plaintiffs is to lose the suit in a way that confirms the veracity of the charges made publicly against it. This is what recently happened to Thomas Cooley law School. Past articles here have discussed its efforts to identify a former […]
I found this NYT commentary from this past weekend interesting: looking at a few recent cases pitting government regulators or homeowners against major banks, the article observes, "District court judges are not generally known as flamethrowers, but some seem to be losing patience with the banks."
This revealing podcast from This American Life tells the story of the acetaminophen warning that should have been — but wasn't. For decades. According to the show, fairly small overdoses of this popular pain medicine (the active ingredient in Tylenol) could be quite dangerous to a patient's liver, or even fatal. But the public remained […]
A little while ago Allison posted on the Third Circuit's recent decision in Carrera v. Bayer, explaining that the court … held that, if the defendant does not have purchase records, a consumer class action cannot be certified based on sworn customer affidavits. The court stated the "rigorous analysis" requirement for class certification "appl[ies] to […]
…is the title of this insightful NPR story yesterday from political correspondent Don Gonyea, who investigates a salient divide — highlighted by the current government-shutdown debate — between the populist/tea party wing and the business wing of the Republican Party. Which wing of the GOP should consumers root for in the shutdown debate? The tea […]
Settlements of privacy-based legal challenges to practices of big tech companies often include as one component a contribution by the offending tech giant (e.g. Facebook) to various privacy groups. This thought-provoking article from gigaom asks: is that money well-used, well-planned for? Do these settlements do any good? The article explains: In [several prominent privacy cases], […]
As we've discussed previously, D.C.'s tax-lien program can result in homeowners losing their homes because of liens bought by private companies where the delinquency was only a few hundred dollars. The Post published a fabulous investigative piece (this link is to the first of the three-part series), and the D.C. officials have promised reform. Now, […]
by Brian Wolfman We have posted (for instance, here and here) about efforts to push forward in various ways with the massive Title VII employment disrimination class action thrown out by the Supreme Court in Wal-Mart v. Dukes on the ground that the nationwide class did not meet the requirements of the federal class-action rule […]