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A beer enthusiast blog carries a great open letter from a small microbrew company called Old Ox Brewery, responding to a trademark opposition claiming that because an ox and a bull are both bovines, indeed an ox is a castrated bull, consumers could be confused about whether Red Bull is somehow associated with Old Ox. […]
Two weeks ago, we told you about a lawsuit challenging a Georgia county's practice of imprisoning individuals who could not pay court fees. Now, another lawsuit has been filed in the same vein. The location happens to be Ferguson, Mo., which in 2013 "collected $2.6 million in court fines and fees, mainly on traffic violations […]
Andrew Cheyne, Pamela Mejia, Laura Nixon, and Lori Dorfman, all of the Berkeley Media Studies Group, have written Food and Beverage Marketing to Youth, Current Obesity Reports, September 2014. Here's the abstract: After nearly a decade of concern over the role of food and beverage marketing to youth in the childhood obesity epidemic, American children […]
Ronald J. Mann of Columbia has written Do Defaults on Payday Loans Matter? Here's the abstract: This essay examines the effect on a borrower’s financial health of failure to repay a payday loan. Recent regulatory initiatives suggest an inclination to add an “ability to pay” requirement to payday-loan underwriting that would be fundamentally inconsistent with […]
Yesterday, a federal court in Arkansas issued an opinion that misinterprets federal food labeling law, preemption law, and the use of logic. The case is Craig v. Twinings North America, Inc. Download Opinion Craig v. Twinings Doc 29. Twinings claimed that its tea was a “natural source” of antioxidants. The plaintiff alleged (but I have […]
by Jeff Sovern Some arbitration clauses provide that consumers can opt out of arbitration if the consumer writes to the company within a certain period of time of entering into the agreement, typically 30-60 days after opening the account. In our arbitration study, we observed that we didn't know how many consumers had taken advantage […]
by Jeff Sovern So MSNBC reports here. Here's a quote: Tillis replied: “I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of [the hand-washing] policy as long as they post a sign that says ‘We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom.’” Instead, Tillis believes that […]
by Jeff Sovern RTO kiosks are, as far as I know, a new way to buy/rent goods. In the past, stores specialized in rent-to-own financing/renting, where consumers could agree to rent an item and make payments (typically weekly) for the item until they had purchased it, or alternatively chose to surrender it. RTO businesses, unregulated by Truth […]
Business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce are pushing the Federal Communications Commission to loosen standards under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act — the law that bars unwanted telemarketing calls and junk faxes. If the groups are successful, the result, say consumer advocates, would be more robocalls calls coupled with more difficultly suing for […]