For years now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has authorized auto manufacturers to recall defective vehicles on a regional (rather than a national) basis. The idea, NHTSA maintains, is that some vehicle defects only matter regionally — say, in places that are cold or hot, for defects that supposedly are related to cold-weather […]
Lauren E. Willis of Loyola Los Angeles has written Performance-Based Consumer Law. Here is the abstract: When firm and consumer interests are not well-aligned, the resulting transactions are often lousy, whether one uses consumer autonomy or consumer welfare as the metric. With modern experimental and data analysis techniques, firms can run circles around the law’s […]
…asks this Harvard Magazine review of The Social Machine: Designs for Living Online, by Judith Donath. The review explains: One of [Donath's] goals is to help readers recognize possibilities between real names and online anonymity. She believes pseudonyms could provide more information, not less. “We can simultaneously have a rich impression of others and privacy,” […]
by Ted Mermin (Executive Director, Public Good Law Center), guest blogger As Scott Michelman's earlier post explained, the new California law barring nondisparagement clauses in consumer contracts promises to restrain a pernicious practice before it spreads widely. That in itself is a significant victory well worth celebrating. But here's hoping (and suggesting) that the new law also serve as […]
Watch here, laugh and enjoy. (And learn.) (Note to sensitive readers: in addition to some profanity, there's a rather detailed — but hilarious — digression regarding President Lyndon Johnson's difficulty fitting his private parts into his pants.) (Note to history buffs: this is worth watching for the LBJ bit alone.)
by Jeff Sovern I am partial to Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels. I buy the audio books and listen to them while driving, doing mindless chores, etc. In the latest, Personal, Reacher and a companion are discussing the activities of a British gang of criminals, and the sentence quoted above appears. Interesting to see that the […]
by Paul Alan Levy In two rulings in late August, the Texas Supreme Court addressed significant issues of free speech arising in defamation cases brought by companies against their critics – the availability of injunctive remedies, and the proper procedure for discovery to identify potential defamation defendants who spoke anonymously. The court staked out somewhat […]
…is the title of this expose (from personal experience), in Vox. A telling passage: In most cases like this [i.e. attempting to collect a deceased's debt from his family], the family is not liable for the debts, something we informed them of — that is, if they asked. But if a family without an estate […]
by Paul Alan Levy A dozen years ago, when I had just made the transition from doing union democracy law to cyberlaw, I took on the representation of an IT professional named Hank Mishkoff who modeled his work by creating a web site praising a shopping mall that was being built near his home, using […]
As explained in this article by Daniel Fisher, Seventh Circuit judge Richard Posner recently had some tough questions for proponents of a class-action settlement in which the plaintiff-consumers got coupons (that's right, $10 coupons to purchase the defendant's products!) and the plaintiffs’ lawyers got cash (a million bucks in fees). That's nothing new — that's […]