Senators Feinstein (D-CA) and Collins (R-ME) have introduced a bill entitled Personal Care Products Safety Act, which would gives the FDA significantly more authority over cosmetics and personal care products, including the authority to order recalls of dangerous products. The bill would require the FDA to review chemicals used in these products and to provide […]
In last week's decision Byrd v. Aaron's, Inc., a unanimous panel of the Third Circuit reversed a district court's decision to deny class certification on ascertainability grounds. (You'll recall that ascertainability is the court-developed notion that a class must show an administratively feasible means of identifying class members; the test is particularly strict and plaintiff-unfriendly […]
…is the question analysis by this thoughtful piece in Vox (with an embedded clip from The West Wing, for those of you feeling nostalgic for a more harmonious time in government, however fictional). The occasion for the discussion is Sen. Rand Paul’s proposal to make college completely tax deductible. See whom that would help most, […]
John Oliver has this marvelously clear and detailed report on modern-day debtors’ prisons and how the combination of poor public policy, municipalities’ reliance on fines for their budgets, and private probation companies yields a legal system in which a minor infraction can ruin your life if you don’t have the money to pay the fine. […]
by Paul Alan Levy I have blogged several times (for example here and here) about the efforts of Hadeed Carpet Cleaning to compel Yelp to comply with a Virginia subpoena to identify seven consumers who posted critical reviews on Yelp. Our principal concern about the subpoenas was Hadeed did not claim that the gist of […]
by Jeff Sovern I just finished listening to the audio version of Barney Frank's autobiography, Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage, which Frank reads himself. I listened to it to learn more about consumer law–Frank was so involved in creating the CFPB that the statute doing so carries his […]
Jason Scott Johnston of Virginia has written Do Product Bans Help Consumers? Questioning the Economic Foundations of Dodd-Frank Mortgage Regulation. Here is the abstract: The system of residential mortgage contact regulation enacted by the 2010 Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 has been justified as necessary to prevent lenders from […]
Jim Hawkins of Houston has asked me to post the following: The AALS Section on Commercial and Related Consumer Law is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for its program co-sponsored by the Section on Women in Legal Education during the AALS 2016 Annual Meeting. The papers from the program will be published in […]
Fivethirtyeight.com has a thoughtful analysis this week about "equal pay day," which is the day on which the earnings of the average woman who worked continuously from the beginning of 2014 would catch up to the earnings of the average man who started at the same time but stopped at the end of 2014. (Put […]
…is the message of a Public Citizen post yesterday on Buzzfeed, which points to five reasons that a disaster of the same magnitude could recur. The problems, mainly, are a lack of safeguards and the absence of accountability. Read the whole analysis here.