Category Archives: Uncategorized

Does Google’s market dominance undermine consumer privacy?

That's one of the topics of an article by Nathan Newman entitled "The Costs of Lost Privacy: Consumer Harm and Rising Economic Inequality in the Age of Google." Here is the abstract: This article emphasizes the broad consumer harm from the extraction of personal user data deployed by Google and many other online companies for […]

Today’s Arbitration Outrage: Second Circuit Says Destitute New York Resident Consumer Must Arbitrate Case in Arizona

By Paul Bland, Senior Attorney at Public Justice @PblandBland   Periodically, people ask me rhetorical questions like, "How much worse can the law of arbitration get?  I mean, it's so incredibly bad that it has to have bottomed out, right?" As Jane Wagner famously wrote, no matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep […]

Immigrant rights groups and other legal services providers sue FTC under the Freedom of Information Act for access to consumer-complaint database

Read about it here. Here's an excerpt: Hiring a nonlawyer to do legal work carries the risk of a bad outcome, but the stakes can be especially high for immigrants. Misfiled forms or missed deadlines can lead to deportation. Legal fraud targeting immigrants is on the rise, according to immigration lawyers who blame confusion arising […]

APWU Attacks on Its Members’ Democratic Rights — One Down, One to Go

by Paul Alan Levy Over the course of more than twenty years of representing union members in litigation over issues of union democracy, before my main focus switched to Internet law and IP issues, I found that in some unions, the leaders think nothing of spending other peoples’ money – the union treasury that is […]

Are Manhattan Lasik Center’s discount coupons worth buying?

by Paul Alan Levy The Manhattan Lasik Center secures customers, in part, by offering discounts through Groupon and similar online marketing programs.  For a $1795 Groupon, for example, a customer can get lasik treatment for both eyes.  Several reviews posted on Yelp, however, suggest that it is not at all unusual for patients to appear […]

Frivolous Libel Threats – the Reality Show

by Paul Alan Levy Last October, blogger Christina Garner posted an introspective article reflecting on media coverage of a lawsuit in which Tonya Cooley, a reality-show participant, alleged that two fellow participants had assaulted her sexually in a sequence that did not appear in the broadcast, including inserting a toothbrush into her while she was […]

Tribal lender Western Sky getting out of payday loan business

Yesterday, we told you about declaratory judgment suits by Native American tribes against New York regulators seeking the right to make otherwise usurious payday loans on the ground that the tribes' sovereign immunity allows them to operate free from state usury laws. Now comes word that another payday lender, Western Sky, owned by a Cheyenne […]

Tribal payday lenders sue NY financial regulator

On August 6, New York's financial regulatory agency took aim at online payday lenders, who "offer short-term loans at interest rates that often exceed 500 percent annually." As the New York Times reported, the state's financial regulator sent letters to 35 of the online lenders, instructing them to “cease and desist” from offering loans that […]

NY Attorney General: Donald Trump’s university scammed students

As you may have read, and as described in this article by Michael Gormley, "New York's attorney general sued Donald Trump for $40 million Saturday, saying the real estate mogul helped run a phony 'Trump University' that promised to make students rich but instead steered them into expensive and mostly useless seminars, and even failed […]