David Lazarus on Sending Corporate Criminals to Jail

The LA Times's David Lazurus says in this article that the large-sounding corporate criminal penalties — like recent ones against Glaxo for off-label drug promotion and against BP for conduct that led to the Gulf oil spill — aren't enough to deter and that some corporate criminals should spend time behind bars. Here's an excerpt: If […]

OCC lowers JP Morgan Chase’s CRA Grade to Satisfactory

by Jeff Sovern The Wall Street Journal has the story here.  Previously the grade had been outstanding.  The other three giant US banks retain ratings of outstanding.  Two thoughts: If JP Morgan Chase undertakes new lending to improve its rating, that will say something about the importance of the Community Reinvestment Act in spurring banks […]

Mortgage Crisis in a Nutshell Video

John E. Campbell of Denver has created a video on the mortgage crisis. Here's the abstract (yes, there's an abstract): Before becoming a law professor, much of my work was as a litigator and appellate attorney. I became increasingly passionate about the problems that exist in the mortgage industry. I also became increasingly aware that […]

Shauhin Talesh Study on How Dispute Resolution Structures Affect Implementation of Consumer Law

Shauhin A. Talesh of Irvine has written How Dispute Resolution System Design Matters: An Organizational Analysis of Dispute Resolution Structures and Consumer Lemon Laws, 46 Law & Society Review (2012).  Here's the abstract: This study demonstrates how the structure of dispute resolution shapes the extent to which managerial and business values influence the meaning and implementation of […]

Charles Carreon’s Trademark Claims End, Not With a Bang, but a Whimper

by Paul Alan Levy Last summer, I blogged about trademark claims threatened by Charles Carreon, a California lawyer with a notorious past who maintains a private practice out of his home in Arizona.  He had threatened suit against an anonymous blogger for making fun of Carreon at a web site using the domain name charles-carreon.com, […]

Virginia Supreme Court Reverses Preliminary Injunction Against Yelp Review

by Paul Alan Levy The Virginia Supreme Court has summarily reversed a preliminary injunction requiring the author of a consumer review criticizing a Washington DC contractor to revise her statements about the contractor.   We filed a petition for review arguing that the injunction was an impermissible prior restraint, in addition to violating the common law […]

Rochelle Broboff on the Supreme Court’s Nitro-Lift Decision and the Concern Over Supreme Court Unanimity in FAA Decisions

We posted in late November about the Supreme Court's unanimous per curiam Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) decision in Nitro-Lift Technologies v. Howard. There, the Justices held that, in light of an arbitration clause, only an arbitrator and not the Oklahoma courts could, in the first instance, hold contract provisions unenforceable. Now, in this article, Rochelle Broboff […]