Last week in Nativi v. Deutsche Bank, the California Court of Appeal applied the federal Protecting Tenants Against Foreclosure Act of 2009 (PTFA) to revive two renters' state-law claims against the bank that bought the property they were renting. Rosario Nativi and her son Jose Perez had been living in their home in Sunnyvale, California, […]
William Alden explains that Shiela Bair, former Chair and board member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, has joined the board of the Spanish bank Banco Santander. She left the FDIC in 2011 and said the next year in her book about the financial crisis that “I would like to see financial regulation be viewed […]
We've covered the Target data breach and posted pieces (here, for instance) suggesting what consumers can do to mitigate the risks from that breach and others like it. Now, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a consumer advisory of its own on the topic. The agency has also issued a press release, which I'm […]
RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM: CALL FOR PAPERS LEGAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES IN PREDICTIVE DATA ANALYTICS June 19 & 20, 2014 Blacksburg, Va. Abstract Submission Deadline: March 3, 2014 A research colloquium, “Legal and Ethical Issues in Predictive Data Analytics,” hosted by Professor Janine Hiller of Virginia Tech and co-organized by Professor Tonia Hap Murphy of the University […]
OSHA has proposed making public workplace illness and injury reports, but employers are opposed and have asked their lawyers to try to nix the proposal. Read Jenna Greene's article here.
An antitrust dispute between two pharmaceutical companies over the licensing and pricing of HIV drugs was the setting for a significant ruling from the Ninth Circuit this week regarding discrimination against gay jurors. Applying heightened scrutiny to LGBT jurors, the court held that using a peremptory strike to dismiss a gay juror violates the constitution. […]
[Update: David and I were clearly on the same page this morning — by the time I finished writing this post, he had already just posted on the same case. I'll leave my thoughts up as a complement to his.] In an opinion sympathetic in tone to the problems of ordinary consumers but ultimately unable […]
For years now, some have argued that if substantive due process prohibits disproportionately large punitive damages awards against major corporations, it also should stop courts from enforcing excessive contract damages against consumers. See Seana Valentine Shiffrin, Are Credit Card Late Fees Unconstitutional?, 15 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 457, 460 (2006). Two Ninth Circuit judges […]
by Brian Wolfman According to this Associated Press story, in 2012, the Vermont Attorney General sued a company called Vermints under Vermont’s consumer protection law alleging that Vermints had mislabeled its mints “Vermont’s All-Natural Mints” (my emphasis). What was the AG’s beef with the label? According to the suit, the company is Massachusetts-based and the […]
One might have expected this, but here’s a study to back it up: a college applicant’s social network use can play a significant role in admissions. According to a study by Kaplan (as reported in this New York Times article from November), almost a third of 381 college admission officers surveyed said they “visited an […]