by Jeff Sovern As law students, law professors, and lawyers know, most law reviews are edited by law students, which means that law students select the articles that appear in their journals. The prime submission season is just underway, and so newly-minted law review editors—most in their second year of law school—are choosing among the […]
by Paul Alan Levy The Appellate Division in New York has today affirmed the denial of a pre-litigation petition brought by Woodbridge Structured Funding seeking to compel Opinion Corp. to provide identifying information about the authors of two critical consumer reviews on its Pissed Consumer site.
The latest Obamacare challenge, now pending before the Supreme Court, could if successful cost the states a lot of money. How much? Read the Post's analysis, complete with a state-by-state breakdown and a discussion of its possible implications for the outcome of the case, here.
We recently filed an amicus brief about the standards for subpoenas identifying anonymous Internet users accused of defamatory or otherwise wrongful communications in a surprising venue – the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The underlying case was filed in the Western District of Washington by Macao Music Group, an offshore […]
By Dee Pridgen The ABA Consumer Protection Conference held February 12 on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., focused on the work of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as the work of advertising self-regulatory bodies, especially in the areas of big data and the “Internet of Things.” FTC Chair […]
At a hearing on Capitol Hill last week, lawmakers from both parties expressed interest in exempting small banks and credit unions from new financial rules, reported the Wall St. Journal. But there must be a limit, warned two of the committee’s most pro-consumer voices: Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the top Democrat on the powerful […]
California law caps at 30% the interest rate on loans of $2500 or less. So what did lender CashCall do? It made every loan — no matter how small — into a loan of $2600 or more, by having low-dollar borrowers "prepay" the amount up to $2600 that they didn't want. And what interest rates […]
That last summer's decision in Hobby Lobby wasn't the end of the legal fight over what health care coverage the government could require businesses asserting religious objections to provide for their employees became clear just three days after the Hobby Lobby was handed down. In a brief order that drew a sharp dissent from three […]
by Jeff Sovern I'm looking into survey evidence to establish or defend against a claimed violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act for a possible article. If you have conducted such a survey in one of your cases or know someone who has, please email me at sovernj at stjohns dot edu. Thanks!
That's the title of this article by law professor Einer Elhauge. Here's his to-the-point abstract: The recent US Supreme Court decision in American Express v. Italian Colors Restaurant threatens to gut private antitrust enforcement in the United States by replacing it with ineffective forms of arbitration. The Court's logic that the right to pursue a […]