…filing pro-business, often anti-consumer briefs. Reuters has the story, which provides as one example a case in which the Chamber "argu[ed] that a landfill operator should not have to pay certain damages to nearby residents for the irritating or offensive odors the facility produced. In August, the court issued a ruling in line with what […]
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Many low-income people don't have bank accounts and have to pay fees and incur other costs to get access to their money. Lisa Servon at The Atlantic has written"The Real Reason the Poor Go Without Bank Accounts." Read the whole thing and take a look right now at Servon's concluding paragraph: The banking industry needs […]
Consumers’ ability to address and seek redress for deceptive practices through private litigation is threatened by a recent decision of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. In Carrera v. Bayer (like the FTC case discussed in the post below, a case about deceptive practices involving a dietary supplement), the court recently held that, if the […]
The FTC reported yesterday 7,979 checks averaging $27.42 each to consumers who bought "Wal-Born" dietary supplements sold by the pharmacy chain Walgreens are now being mailed. The FTC’s press release explains: In 2010, Walgreens settled FTC charges that it deceptively advertised that the supplements could effectively prevent colds, fight germs, and boost the immune system. […]
We posted late last year about a Second Circuit decision that circumscribed the government's authority to criminalize off-label prescription-drug promotion on First Amendment grounds. Now, law professor Christopher Robertson has written "When Truth Cannot Be Presumed: The Regulation of Drug Promotion Under an Expanding First Amendment," which discusses the issue. Here is the abstract: The Food, […]
Yesterday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued this order requiring Chase Bank and JPMorgan Chase Bank to refund around $321 million to consumers who were charged on their credit cards for add-on services that they did not receive. That's right, the CFPB found that these banks charged for things that their customers just did […]
George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University – Department of Social and Decision Sciences ("CMU"), Cass R. Sunstein of Harvard Law School, and Russell Golman, also of CMU, have written Disclosure: Psychology Changes Everything. Here's the abstract: We review literature examining the effects of laws and regulations that require public disclosure of information. These requirements are […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has just launched this website filled with data provided by financial institutions under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), which requires those institutions to report and publicly disclose information about mortgages. HMDA became law in 1975 and is implemented through Regulation C. In 2009, the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation […]
After the Supreme Court's rulings in American Express v. Italian Colors and AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, why wouldn't an employer, whenever possible, force its employees into individual arbitrations over employment disputes through adhesive arbitration clauses? At least, those rulings generally should allow private, non-unionized employers to avoid class dispute resolution (whether in court or before […]
by Brian Wolfman As we've reported in the past (for instance, here), states with governors and/or legislatures who don't like the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have threatened not to participate in the Act's Medicaid expansion (which the Supreme Court said could not be forced on the states by Congress under the Constitution's "Spending Clause"). As […]