We have posted several times recently (go here, here, and here) about Mutual Pharmaceutical Company v. Bartlett, a pending Supreme Court case that presents the question whether FDA approval of a generic prescription drug preempts a state-law damages claim premised on the drug's design defect. (The Supreme Court held 5-4 in PLIVA v. Mensing (2011) that FDA […]
Yes, says the Sixth Circuit, in Glazer v. Chase Home Finance, issued yesterday. This is good news for FDCPA plaintiffs, who have had to contend for years with a district court consensus that the enforcement of a security interest is not subject to most of the provisions of the Act. An odd type of split […]
Should public companies be forced to disclose to their shareholders — and thus to the world — their campaign contributions (rather than funnelling them secretively through third parties, such as the Chamber of Commerce)? The SEC is considering a disclosure rule, but the Chamber of Commerce is opposed, as explained in this article by Sue […]
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled on Friday in Wyeth v. Weeks that a patient who took a generic version of a drug may sue a brand-name drug manufacturer for failing to warn about a drug’s risks. In June 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Pliva v. Mensing that injured patients' state-law failure-to-warn claims against […]
You can get notices via email of government recalls of various products. You don't have to get notices for everything regulated by the relevant agency. For instance, you can get recall notices that concern only the make and model of the car that you own. To sign up for emails from the Consumer Product Safety […]
Five U.S. senators, led by former Connecticut Attorney General (now Senator) Richard Blumenthal, has called on the Fed and the FDIC to ban payday lending by federally regulated banks. The Consumerist has a nice write up.
This tax advice from Holly Patreus, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's head of Servicemember Affairs, is directed at members of the military and their families, but much of the advice is useful to consumers generally.
Edward A. Morse of Creighton and Vasant Raval of Creighton Business have written Private Ordering in Light of the Law: Acheiving Consumer Protection through Payment Card Security Measures, 10 DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal 213 (2012). Here's the abstract: A private ordering regime has developed within the payment card industry to define appropriate security […]
Omri Ben-Shahar of Chicago has written Arbitration and Access to Justice: Economic Analysis. Here is the abstract: Mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer contracts are widely regarded as problematic because they limit consumer’s access to judicial forums, to fair procedures, and potentially to any kind of remedy. But rather than looking at consumers as a group, […]
by Paul Alan Levy I often write in this space about baseless lawsuits brought by businesses to suppress criticism, although at the same time I have acknowledged that, sometimes, litigation may be a sound response to baseless attacks that are having a genuine untoward impact on reputation. In this interesting blog post on a web […]