Credit-card (and other) companies would love it if consumers received their monthly statements electronically only. It's cheaper. But, according to a a new report from the National Consumer Law Center — entitled Paper Statements: An Important Consumer Protection— policy makers (and consumers) should resist the pressure to move to an electronic-only world. Here's an excerpt from the […]
Plastic utensils are very cheap to make, and so lots and lots of them are produced day after day, year after year. But plastic utensils take up room in landfills and degrade slowly. So, what about edible utensils? They are delicious (we're told) and have a long shelf life. And, even if you don't want […]
Here. Excerpt: Greed is undermining class actions, according to Ted Frank, founder and director of the Center for Class Action Fairness in Washington. Consumer and other class settlements often pay more to trial lawyers than to their clients, Frank says, and he's devoted his professional life to fighting that trend. Frank is an objector—a lawyer […]
Chris Jay Hoofnagle of Berkeley has written Assessing the Federal Trade Commission's Privacy Assessments, 14(2) IEEE Security & Privacy 58–64 (Mar/Apr. 2016). Here is the abstract: Consumer protection regulators worldwide share basic problems: the companies that regulators police are so powerful and rich that fines do not matter. Consider the French with their €150,000 fine […]
The Center for Public Integrity reports today on the expensive lobbying effort by the big tobacco companies to fend off state taxes and regulation of e-cigarettes. Despite the tobacco industry’s tarnished public image, it is operating a powerful and massive influence machine in statehouses from Salt Lake City to Topeka. With a playbook crafted nearly […]
The New York Times reports today: In August of 2009, after ruptured airbag inflators in Honda vehicles were linked to least four injuries and a death, the automaker quietly requested a design change and did not notify U.S. regulators, Honda confirmed in response to inquiries from Reuters. Honda Motor Co asked supplier Takata Corp to […]
We told you a little while back about a suit by a former law student alleging that her school (Thomas Jefferson School of Law) had taken her money (and caused her student loans to run up) while unlawfully exaggerating her prospects for post-graduation legal employment. As reporter Karen Sloan explains, a San Diego jury yesterday found in favor […]
Oren Bar-Gill of Harvard and Kevin E. Davis of NYU have written (Mis)perceptions of Law in Consumer Markets. Here's the abstract: There are good reasons to believe that consumers’ behavior is sometimes influenced by systematic misperceptions of legal norms that govern product quality. Consumers might misperceive specific rules, such as those found in food safety […]
It appears the FBI has another way to hack into the San Bernardino killer's phone. The good news for Apple is this avoids a court order that it must build a key for the FBI to unlock the iPhone. The bad news is that it suggests Apple's security perhaps isn't as good as touted. The […]