The following Federal Trade Commission services are NOT available during the shutdown: National Do Not Call Registry (For consumers) National Do Not Call Registry (For telemarketers) Consumer Sentinel Network (For law enforcement) Complaint Assistant (For filing consumer complaints) Identitytheft.gov (For consumers reporting ID theft) Econsumer.gov (For consumers reporting international complaints) Public comments can be submitted, […]
The Supreme Court today decided Henry Schein Inc. v. Archer and White Sales Inc., which presented the question "whether the Federal Arbitration Act permits a court to decline to enforce an agreement delegating questions of arbitrability to an arbitrator if the court concludes the claim of arbitrability is 'wholly groundless.'” The answer was an unanimous […]
The Supreme Court held argument yesterday in Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. v. Albrecht. Here's the (loaded) question presented in Merck: Whether a state-law failure-to-warn claim is pre-empted when the Food and Drug Administration rejected the drug manufacturer's proposal to warn about the risk after being provided with the relevant scientific data, or whether such a […]
That's the name of this Washington Post article by Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee. The article explains that the FDA continues to allow critical, implanted medical devices on the market via the so-called "510(k) process." Among other serious deficiencies, the 510(k) process does not require pre-market clinical safety testing. Lenzer and Brownlee explain that the […]
by Jeff Sovern The CFPB's former acting director, Mick Mulvaney, compared the Bureau's public database to Yelp and threatened to take it private, though he never did so. Director Kraninger has not made public her plans for the database, to the best of my knowledge, and so public access to the complaints may still be […]
by Jeff Sovern Regular CFPB observers will recall that after Mulvaney took over as acting CFPB director, it took many months before the Bureau announced its first enforcement action. Well, the new director, Kathy Kraninger, has already announced her first settlement. This settlement might offer some guidance as to what kind of director Kraninger will […]
Alexander Tsesis of Loyola of Chicago has written Marketplace of Ideas, Privacy, and Digital Audiences, forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review. Here's the abstract: The availability of almost limitless sets of digital information has opened a vast marketplace of ideas. Information service providers like Facebook and Twitter provide users with an array of personal […]
by Jeff Sovern The FTC was expected to run out of funding to conduct most of its operations at some point today, according to the Washington Post. The FTC's shutdown is obviously bad news for consumers. My understanding is that because the CFPB receives its funding from the Fed, it is not subject to the […]
Excerpts from the announcement: The Janet D. Steiger Fellowship Project provides law students the extraordinary opportunity to work in the consumer protection departments of state and territorial Offices of Attorneys General and other consumer protection agencies, including the National Association of Attorneys General and the Attorney General’s Office of the District of Columbia, throughout the […]
It could have been a routine order directing arbitration in a commercial dispute no one beyond the parties would likely care about. Instead, Judge William Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts used the occasion of a dispute between two companies about the meaning of their arbitration agreement to deliver an […]