Josuhua Wright & John Yun on the FTC’s Unfairness Power and Digital Platforms

Former FTC Commissioner Joshua D. Wright, now of George Mason,  and John M. Yun of the FTC have written Stop Chug-a-Lug-a-Lugin 5 Miles an Hour on Your International Harvester: How Modern Economics Brings the FTC's Unfairness Analysis Up to Speed with Digital Platforms, 6 George Washington Law Review,  2130 (2015). Here is the abstract: In this […]

Must Louis Vuitton at last start paying for its trademark bullying?

by Paul Alan Levy Over the past couple of weeks, several bloggers, most impressively Rebecca Tushnet,  have published their analyses of a decision by Judge Jesse Furman granting summary judgment dismissing a lawsuit by Louis Vuitton Malletier against a tiny company called “My Other Bag” which produces a line of canvas totes that poke gentle fun at […]

Advice on employee pension benefits

As one mega-brokerage firm puts it, "[f]aced with mounting pension costs and greater volatility, companies are increasingly offering their current and former employees a critical choice: Take a lump sum payment now or hold on to their pension," which would be paid out periodically over the beneficiary's lifetime. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has put […]

Why did Florida drop standards for infant heart surgery?

Ars Technica asks this question amid concerns that the move may have motivated by contributions from the healthcare company whose poor track record prompted the drafting of standards in the first place: [A] 2014 medical review and a June 2015 report by CNN, which found that one particular medical facility, St. Mary’s Medical Center and Palm Beach […]

Harvard Board of Overseers candidates: make Harvard free

A slate of five candidates running for Harvard's governing board thinks Harvard's endowment is big enough that it can afford to great free tuition for all undergrads. The candidates — an interesting left-right alliance, including Ralph Nader on the left and four opponents of affirmative action on the right – also raise the concern that the current admission […]

DOT to push development of autonomous vehicles

The Times reported last week: With automakers and technology companies rushing to develop self-driving cars, the Obama administration on Thursday pledged to expedite regulatory guidelines for autonomous vehicles and invest in research to help bring them to market. … “We are bullish on autonomous vehicles,” [Transportation Secrecy Anthony] Foxx said. “The actions we are taking […]

Are Consumers Using the New CFPB Mortgage Disclosures to Shop Around?

Not so much, according to this story in the Boston Herald. Excerpt: [Apparently [buyers are] not [using the disclosures] so much. Bill Emerson, chief executive of Quicken Loans, the country’s second highest volume mortgage lender, says his firm is seeing no surge in shopping by applicants using the Loan Estimate. “I don’t think consumers are changing […]

Supreme Court Holds Offer of Judgment Does Not Moot a Class Action

In a much-anticipated ruling, the Supreme Court today held that a class-action defendant cannot moot a plaintiff’s case by making a pre-class-certification offer of judgment that would satisfy the individual plaintiff’s personal claims but not those of the class. The decision in Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, holds that such an offer does not moot the […]