Imre Szalai Study Finds 78 Fortune 100 Companies Use Class Action Waivers in Consumer Agreements

Imre S. Szalai of Loyola of New Orleans has written The Prevalence of Consumer Arbitration Agreements by America’s Top Companies, 52 U.C. Davis L. Rev. Online 233 (2019). Here is the abstract:  This article present the results of a study that examines the use of arbitration agreements by the top 100 Fortune Magazine-ranked largest domestic […]

Reidenberg et al. Article on Trustworthy Privacy Indicators

Joel R. Reidenberg of Fordham, together with four co-authors, has written Trustworthy Privacy Indicators: Grades, Labels, Certifications and Dashboards, 96 Washington University Law Review  (2019).  Here's the abstract: Despite numerous groups’ efforts to score, grade, label, and rate the privacy of websites, apps, and network-connected devices, these attempts at privacy indicators have, thus far, not been […]

Gilles & Friedman paper on Qui Tam as a model for enforcement of group rights

Myriam E. Gilles of Cardozo and Gary B. Friedman of the Friedman Law Group have written The New Qui Tam: A Model for the Enforcement of Group Rights in a Hostile Era. Here is the abstract: The present Administration has made clear it has no interest in enforcing statutes designed to protect workers, consumers, voters and […]

More on the Consumer Product Safety Commission

The Washington Post reports today that the CPSC was pursuing a recall of the BOB stroller, which apparently has a defect that has caused hundreds of crashes. Then the Trump appointees to the Commission halted the effort. Staff members at the Consumer Product Safety Commission collected 200 consumer-submitted reports from 2012 to 2018 of spontaneous […]

Are Elite Law Schools Elite When It Comes to Consumer Law Classes?

by Jeff Sovern For a variety of reasons, what elite law schools do has an effect on legal education disproportionate to the numbers of such schools.  For one reason, most law professors attended an elite law school, and their vision of what a law school should be is informed by their experiences as students.  Consequently, […]

Proposal regarding litigation finance

Law prof Maya Steinitz has written Follow the Money? A Proposed Approach for Disclosure of Litigation Finance Agreements. Here is the abstract: Litigation finance is the new and fast-growing practice by which a non-party funds a plaintiff’s litigation either for-profit or for some other motivation. Some estimates placed the size of the litigation finance market […]

Read about Office Depot’s scam to fix infected computers that were not infected and needed no fixing

Read Michele Singletary's column about the scam here. The allegations against Office Depot were not pretty, and, as SIngletary explains, the Federal Trade Commission has put an end to the fraudulent scheme. Here's the gist of it: Although not admitting any wrongdoing, Office Depot and California-based Support.com have agreed to pay $35 million to settle the […]

Questions about industry influence at CPSC

Two weeks ago, we blogged, here, about FairWarning's investigation, here, into industry influence at the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Now, the House Energy and Commerce committee has called on the acting head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Ann Marie Buerkle, to disclose her contacts with business groups, and has noted concern that the FairWarning […]

CFPB issues its annual report about consumer complaints

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued its 2018 Consumer Response Annual Report, which, as its name (sorta) suggests, reports on consumer complaints to the agency. The CFPB received about 330,000 complaints in 2018. The report discusses consumer complaints and the CFPB's response to them in 13 categories: credit or consumer reporting, debt collection, mortgages, […]