In June 2011, the Supreme Court decertified a class action brought by women claiming that Wal-Mart underpaid and underpromoted its female employees throughout the chain. The Court's decision in the case, called Wal-Mart v. Dukes, was predicted to have significant effect on plaintiffs' ability to litigate Title VII discrimination cases on a classwide basis. Two […]
by Paul Alan Levy Over the past few years I have blogged about our defense of some documentary filmmakers who had to defend the use of the name "Jenzabar" (a software company) in the meta tags and title tag for a web page about a software company called Jenzabar (it was founded by one of […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has subpoenaed documents from eBay relating to its "Bill Me Later" financing service, which allows financing of purchases from many online stores, apparently over concerns that the finance charges imposed by "Bill Me Later" are excessive. The Wall Street Journal has details about the CFPB investigation.
Remember how car dealers fought to avoid being subject to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's jurisdiction, and won? It turns out that the dealers are still experiencing pressure to comply with the Bureau's edicts. From Carter Dougherty's story: Under pressure from the agency, large banks that routinely buy auto loans have been reviewing records to […]
We've previously written about a Takings Clause case filed to challenge Washington D.C.'s practice of permitting private companies to buy tax liens, institute foreclosure proceedings, and keep the entire value of the property (not just the amount needed to satisfy the debt). On Friday, D.C. moved to dismiss the suit on a variety of procedural […]
In case you didn't see it, go here or click on the embedded video below for a 60 Minutes report claiming that members of Congress use "Leadership" PACs, the hiring of family members on campaigns, and high-interest loans to themselves to enrich their lifestyles and, sometimes, their and their family members' personal bank accounts. And, […]
That's the name of this article by Catherine Sharkey. Here's the abstract: In tort preemption cases, when federal law ousts conflicting state tort law, two fundamental functional premises should hold true: (1) the federal standard of care is more than a minimal standard and (2) the state standard of tort liability has a significant regulatory […]
Charles L. Knapp of Hastings has written Is There a 'Duty to Read'? in Revisiting the Contracts Scholarship of Stewart Macaulay: On the Empirical and the Lyrical 315 (Jean Braucher, John Kidwell, & William C. Whitford eds. 2013). Here's the abstract: The notion that there is in general contract law a “duty to read” persists in […]
by Deepak Gupta In a 70-page opinion by Justice Goodwin Liu, the California Supreme Court on Thursday issued its eagerly anticipated decision in Sonic-Calabasas v. Moreno. Addressing the impact of both AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion and American Express v. Italian Colors for the first time, the court makes clear that unconscionability — focused on whether […]
As Sari Horwitz and Danielle Douglas report, JP Morgan, the nation’s largest bank, has reached a tentative agreement with the Justice Department to pay a record $13 billion to resolve allegations that it knowingly sold faulty mortgage securities that contributed to the financial crisis, a person familiar with the talks said Saturday. If finalized, the deal […]