Another company reacts to AT&T v. Concepcion. A Forbes article yesterday notes that Microsoft is now including forced arbitration and class-action bans in its customer agreements. The article explains: Recently, [Microsoft] made changes to the Services Agreement governing Hotmail, SkyDrive, Bing, Windows Live Messenger and other online services. The key provision in the Agreement requires […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Of course, debt collectors always make money because people's loans are in default. But student loan debt appears to be especially attractive for debt collectors, as explained in this article by Andrew Martin. Why? Among other reasons, the government helps debt collectors track down many of the debtors, and it is very hard to discharge […]
Here's an explanation: U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is a superstar within the Democratic Party and a lightning rod for Republican outrage over the issue of tax fairness. But there is one tax that Warren doesn't like and it's part of Obamacare. The 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices is a little-known provision in […]
This article by Todd Ruger compares the views of President Obama and former Governor Romeny on legal issues, including judicial nominations.
This Washington Post article from last Friday explains that a coalition of the top state highway safety officers want to ban hand-held cell phone use by drivers. But their ultimate goal is probably a ban on all cell-phone use by drivers — hand-held or hands-free — because, as we've explained earlier, studies show that hands-free cell […]
The cancellation of indebtedness generally produces income for federal and state income tax purposes. But as LA Times writer Jim Puzzanghera explains, "in 2007, Congress enacted the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act to give struggling homeowners a break. If the debt is forgiven because of a drop in a home's value or a decline in […]
In July, we wrote about the Ninth Circuit's rejection of a settlement of claims that Kellogg's had misrepresented that kids could improve their attentiveness in school by nearly 20 percent by eating Frosted Mini Wheats for breakfast. The court held that the cy pres was not properly related to the claims and the class, and […]
We reported earlier on the national mortgage fraud settlement between the federal government, state attorneys general, and the five largest mortgage servicers. (Go here and here, for instance.) The settlement's official website has lots of information, including an executive summary, which sets out some of the settlement's key terms. The summary discusses the billions of […]
Yesterday, we posted on President Obama's statement that if other means of curbing corporate election spending fail, he would consider a constitutional amendment to overrule the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. The President thought it possible that the Court would itself overrule Citizens United, but that seems unlikely in the near term in light of […]
Read this AP story. Here's an excerpt: Patient after patient asked: Is eating organic food, which costs more, really better for me? Unsure, Stanford University doctors dug through reams of research to find out — and concluded there’s little evidence that going organic is much healthier, citing only a few differences involving pesticides and antibiotics. […]