by Paul Alan Levy Med Express, an Ohio company that sells over eBay, is trying to maintain a perfect seller rating by suing a South Carolina woman who had the audacity to describe a problem she had with one of their deliveries — a photographic accessory that arrived with $1.40 postage due. The customer found […]
by Paul Alan Levy In a brief opinion issued today, Judge Richard Seeborg of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California awarded Christopher Recouvreur more than $46,000 in attorney fees and expenses for having had to defend himself against a series of wild and baseless threats of suit for trademark infringement […]
by Jeff Sovern Yesterday, I was on a panel at the Annual Meeting of the American Council on Consumer Interests, along with Dr. Yilan Xu, a professor at the University of Illinois in agricultural and consumer economics. Dr. Xu's talk concerned a natural experiment in Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland had enacted an anti-predatory lending ordinance which was […]
Today, Public Citizen, working with co-counsel at Thomas & Solomon LLP of Rochester, N.Y., and O’Hara, O’Connell & Ciotoli of Fayetteville, N.Y., filed a petition to appeal the class certification denial in Roach v. T.L. Cannon Corp., a wage-and-hour class action. The appeal will be among the first to test the scope of the Supreme […]
A group of organizations including the Union of Concerned Scientists, Breast Cancer Fund, and Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families yesterday sent a letter to major retailers asking them to phase out the use of more than 100 chemicals used in hundreds of products, including wrinkle-free clothes, shampoos, sofa cushions, and food packaging. The retailers include Walmart, […]
by Brian Wolfman A good bit of important congressional legislation is justified under the Constitution's so-called Spending Clause. Key programs in the environmental, education, and public benefits areas, for instance, are Spending Clause programs. The idea of much of this legislation, put simply, is that the legislation offers money to states to implement joint federal-state […]
by Brian Wolfman The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) was sold to Congress in large part on the argument that state courts were abusing the class action–for instance, by certifying class actions that should not have been certified–and harming the interests of law abiding corporations that do business nationally. CAFA sought to remedy […]
A recent post explained that many federal agency health and safety regulations must be sent for review to the Office of Management Budget (OMB), where they can be delayed or die at OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Sometimes regulations emerge from OIRA looking different from what they looked like when they arrived. […]
Last Friday, Paul Levy posted on the Michigan Court of Appeals' new ruling, Thomas Cooley Law School v. Doe, concerning the rights of anonymous on-line critics to retain their anonymity during litigation. Karen Sloan has now written this article providing more details on the ruling and quoting Paul.
Last Friday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued its 2011 National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS). The agency explains that "at any given daylight moment across America, approximately 660,000 drivers are using cell phones or manipulating electronic devices while driving, a number that has held steady since 2010. According to separate NHTSA data, more […]