Consistent with rulings of other circuits, the Second Circuit held today, in Purdue Pharma v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, that a state's parens patriae action is not removable from state court to federal court as a "class action" under the Class Action Fairness Act. (A parens patriae action is one in which the state or other government […]
The FTC announced this morning that it has settled charges it brought against related companies that allegedly peddled fake mortgage assistance relief to financially distressed Spanish-speaking homeowners in the U.S. In July 2012, the FTC filed a complaint alleging that the defendants, operating from the Dominican Republic, with violating the FTC Act and the Mortgage […]
In 2010, the FTC charged Iovate Health Sciences U.S.A. and two affiliated Canadian companies with deceptively advertising that supplements called Accelis, nanoSLIM, Cold MD, Germ MD, and Allergy MD could help consumers lose weight or could treat and prevent colds, flu, and allergies. In settling with the FTC, Iovate agreed to pay $5.5 million for […]
By now, you have probably heard of the two new mortgage foreclosure settlements with federal regulators, one in which 10 banks have settled for $8.5 billion. (In the other settlement, mega-lender Bank of America will pay Fannie Mae almost $10.4 billion. mostly to buy back bad mortgages it had earlier sold to Fannie.) $3.3 billion […]
by Brian Wolfman The President campaigned emphatically on a tax plan that would raise taxes for people making more than $250,000. He was equally emphatic that he would not abide a tax bill that would raise taxes on middle-income working families. He said this many times. Democrats made the same point: We can't let the […]
That's the name of this brand-new 344-page ebook on public debt in the United States edited by Franklin Allen, Anna Gelpern, Charles Mooney, and David Skeel. The book contains 15 articles on the public debt, including one called "Origins of the Fiscal Constitution" by Michael McConnell, a couple articles on the U.S. government's capacity to […]
In fact, there were fewer airline crashes involving passengers — 11 — than in any year since 1945. Read about it here.
James P. Nehf of Indiana University has written Open Book: The Failed Promise of Information Privacy in America. Here's the abstract: With financial and other personal information about us in countless databases, and with companies such as Facebook and Google collecting data about their users to drive profits and satisfy expectations of shareholders, there is […]
by Brian Wolfman The FDA has issued two proposed rules to implement the Food Saftey Modernization Act enacted in 2011. Check out the FDA's home page for the new rules. The law seeks to do more to prevent food borne illness. The first new rule concerns controls for human food and is aimed at the […]
by Maura Dundon, Senior Policy Counsel, Center for Responsible Lending Military consumers get a federal private right of action Recent amendments to the Military Lending Act (aka the Talent Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act) provide a rare, new private right of action for military consumers—but the effectiveness of the potentially broad-sweeping Act still […]