President to nominate Melissa Holyoak and Andrew Ferguson to be FTC commissioners

Here. According to Bloomberg,”Holyoak is currently solicitor general with the Utah Attorney General’s Office; Ferguson, a former aide to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, is Virginia’s solicitor general.” The FTC is currently operating with only three of its five commissioners, all Democrats. It is not permitted to have more than three commissioners from the same […]

If the Chamber of Commerce’s claim that discrimination isn’t unfair is correct, why does Student for Fair Admissions have “fair” in its name?

I am working on an article about the CFPB’s determination that discrimination is unfair, a claim that the Chamber of Commerce and banking trade groups are challenging in litigation. Consequently, I am collecting examples in which people used the word “fair” to mean “without discrimination,” or conversely, “unfair” to convey discriminatory conduct. A prominent example […]

New report on damages in consumer protection lawsuits

Good Jobs First reports that “[o]ver the past two decades, major companies have paid out over $25 billion in damages and settlements in class action and multi-district consumer protection lawsuits filed throughout the United States” concerning overcharging customers for goods and services or engaging in false advertising. Read the details here.

Court allows consumer to bring TCPA case concerning calls to number on Do-Not-Call registry

In a case under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held today that the owner and subscriber of a phone with a number listed on the Do-Not-Call Registry suffers an injury sufficient to confer standing when unsolicited telemarketing calls or texts are sent to the number in violation of the […]

Another benefit to submitting to the Berkeley Consumer Law Scholars Conference

Alan Kaplinsky of Ballard Spahr has asked me to mention that the authors of papers that are selected for the Berkeley Consumer Law Scholars Conference that I posted about yesterday will also be considered to be guests on Ballard Spahr’s weekly podcast program, Consumer Finance Monitor, where Alan would interview them about their papers. Consumer […]

Save the Date & Call for Abstracts: Consumer Law Scholars Conference 2024

We received the following announcement: Save the Date: CLSC 2024 We are pleased to announce the sixth annual Consumer Law Scholars Conference (CLSC), which will be held February 29-March 1, 2024, at Berkeley Law. Save the date! The purpose of the CLSC is to support in-progress scholarship, foster a community of consumer law scholars, and build connections […]

Rory Van Loo calls for more attention to consumer law

Rory Van Loo of BU has written The Public Stakes of Consumer Law: The Environment, the Economy, Health, Disinformation, and Beyond, 107 Minn. L. Rev. 2039 (2023). Here’s the abstract: Consumer law has a conflicted and narrow identity. It is most immediately a form of business law, governing market transactions between people and companies. Accordingly, […]

CFPB accepting applications for advisory committees

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has three advisory committees — the Consumer Advisory Board, the Community Bank Advisory Council, the Credit Union Advisory Council, and the Academic Research Council –that provide the CFPB with information about emerging trends and practices in the consumer financial marketplace. The CFPB is looking for applicants for the committees, including […]

Can Frederic Eshelman Avoid the First Amendment by Claiming That He Plans to Sue a US Critic Abroad?

Frederic Eshelman, a pharmaceutical magnate, resents being criticized by an anonymous gmail user who called him a “piece of shit” and urged companies to stop collaborating with Eshelman for, among other things, “abusing police resources” when he used his political influence to secure the arrest and prosecution of hunters who “corner-crossed” his hunting reserve to […]

FTC sues Amazon over Prime enrollment and cancellation practices

The Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon.com today for allegedly enrolling consumers in Amazon Prime without their consent and knowingly making it difficult for consumers to cancel their Prime subscriptions. The complaint charges that Amazon used manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs known as “dark patterns” to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically-renewing Prime subscriptions. The […]