For those in New Haven: I'll be giving a talk about plaintiff-side appellate advocacy at noon tomorrow (Thursday) at Yale Law School. Among other things, I'll discuss the advocacy imbalance facing consumers, workers, and other plaintiffs in the appellate courts and touch on the fate of class actions in the Roberts Court. Hope to see you there. […]
by Paul Alan Levy One of the sweetest things that Public Citizen does each year is recognize a long-time public interest staffer whose work is vital to that staffer's organization, but whose work is sufficiently behind-the-scenes that he or she receives no public recognition. The award is named for Phyllis McCarthy, who started working for […]
Dietary supplements often are taken for their drug-like effects, but, unlike drugs, they are subject to very little federal regulation because they are (supposed to be) made solely from "natural" substances. So, with that in mind, read this article by Alison Young. Here's an excerpt: For the second time in recent weeks, scientists have found […]
Implementing the settlement over its "Sponsoned Stories" program — to which Public Citizen objected in May and has now appealed this fall — Facebook has changed its privacy program to make more clear to users when it will use their images in advertising. As the Times put it, "If you post something on Facebook, let […]
The Supreme Court has granted review in yet another class action, and this one has large implications for the future of securities-fraud litigation. In Haliburton v. Erica P. John Fund, the Court will decide whether to overrule or substantially modify the rule in Basic, Inc. v. Levinson (1988), which adopted the "fraud-on-the-market" theory of reliance […]
Charles L. Knapp of Hastings has written Unconscionability in American Contract Law: A Twenty-First Century Survey. Here's the abstract: The notion that a court tasked with enforcing a private agreement should be allowed – or even, in some cases, required – to withhold enforcement because of the unfairness of the agreement is not a new […]
Today Public Citizen filed the opening brief in an appeal on behalf of a putative class of Applebee's workers throughout New York State. The workers sued their employer, T.L. Cannon, owner and operator of 53 Applebee's locations in New York, claiming various wage violations, including that the employer trained its supervisors and managers to manipulate […]
Linda Greenhouse had this interesting piece in the New York Times yesterday, about Chief Justice Roberts's "invitation" to cases challenging cy pres awards, as she describes the Chief Justice's statement (at p. 24 of the pdf) last week concerning the denial of the petiton for certiorari in Marek v. Lane–the cert petition about the cy […]
by Paul Alan Levy The major ruling of the day: Circuit Judge Denny Chin, sitting as a trial judge because he retained the case after being promoted to the Second Circuit, has granted summary judgment rejecting the Authors Guild’s copyright claims against Google’s program of scanning books into digital form and both offering the digital […]
by Deepak Gupta Jeff and Brian have already posted on the news of a final settlement in Mount Holly. Although we've known all along that a settlement was likely, this is still big news. Let's put this in perspective: For the second time in just two years, an eleventh-hour settlement before oral argument has denied the […]