Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

Outlawing Corporate Prosecution Deals When People Have Died, Peter Reilly

Faculty Scholarship

Two Boeing 737 MAX aircraft crashes, occurring less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019, resulted in 346 deaths—possibly the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history. The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) used an alternative dispute resolution tool called a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) to resolve criminal charges against Boeing and to immunize the company’s senior-level managers from prosecution. In the end, the company admitted to engaging in the criminal behavior, paid a monetary fine, and agreed to cooperate fully with the government—meaning there would be no courtroom trial, no formal adjudication of guilt, and no possibility of …

Amazon's Pricing Paradox, Rory Van Loo, Nikita Aggarwal

Faculty Scholarship

Antitrust scholars have widely debated the apparent paradox of Amazon seemingly wielding monopoly power while offering low prices to consumers. A single company’s behavior thereby helped spark an intellectual renaissance as scholars debated why Amazon’s prices were so low, whether antitrust enforcers should intervene, and, eventually, how the field should be reformed for the era of large online platforms. One of the few things that all parties have agreed upon amidst those contentious conversations is that Amazon offers low prices. This Article challenges that assumption by demonstrating that Amazon charges higher prices than commonly understood. More importantly, unraveling the disconnect …

Confidentiality Clauses In Settlement Agreements After The Consumer Review Fairness Act, Wayne Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

Online commerce has skyrocketed in recent years, and shoppers are purchasing goods or services online in greater numbers every year. The COVID-19 pandemic has only hastened the trend. One significant aspect of online shopping is the presence of consumer reviews posted by prior purchasers of goods or services, describing their experience with the products, the services and/or the selling merchant. A vast majority of online shoppers say that they rely on these reviews to help inform their purchasing decisions. Positive reviews can be tremendously beneficial to a business’ profitability, whereas negative reviews can be equally detrimental. Users of the internet …

Gamestopped: How Robinhood’S Gamestop Trading Halt Reveals The Complexities Of Retail Investor Protection, Neal Newman

Faculty Scholarship

Should brokers have the unfettered right to restrict investor trading? GameStop, a brick-and-mortar video game retailer, had been experiencing declining revenues since 2016. However, GameStop saw its share price climb almost 1000 percent in the span of a one- week period from January 21, 2021 to January 27, 2021 due to retail investors buying significant amounts of GameStop shares during that period. Melvin Capital, a hedge fund, ended up losing billions as they were betting that GameStop shares would lose value instead of increase—a practice referred to as short selling. On January 28, 2021, brokers inexplicably halted trading on GameStop …

The Public Stakes Of Consumer Law: The Environment, The Economy, Health, Disinformation, And Beyond, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

This Article shows how consumer law, a field “derided as the law of small problems,”⁴ is more accurately viewed as important for addressing large-scale societal threats. It also offers a more integrated conceptual and institutional approach to consumer law so that the field can have a better chance of fulfilling its societal potential.

Part I of this Article outlines the importance of consumer law. It maps consumer law’s connections to some of the most pressing societal threats: climate change, public health, inequality, and disinformation. Part II focuses on consumer law’s place in the legal academy and government. Currently, important …

The Case Against The Debt Tax, Vijay Raghavan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Price Gouging In A Pandemic, Christopher Buccafusco, Daniel Hemel, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic led to acute supply shortages across the country as well as concerns over price increases amid surging demand. In the process, it reawakened a debate about whether and how to regulate “price gouging” — a controversy that continues as inflation has accelerated even as the pandemic abates. Animating this debate is a longstanding conflict between laissez-faire economics, which champions price fluctuations as a means to allocate scarce goods, and perceived norms of consumer fairness, which are thought to cut strongly against sharp price hikes amid shortages.

This Article provides a new, empirically grounded perspective on the price …

The Price Of Fairness, Christopher Buccafusco, Daniel Hemel, Eric Talley

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic led to acute supply shortages across the country as well as concerns over price increases amid surging demand. In the process, it reawakened a debate about whether and how to regulate “price gouging”—a controversy that continues as inflation has accelerated even as the pandemic abates. Animating this debate is a longstanding conflict between laissez-faire economics, which champions price fluctuations as a means to allocate scarce goods, and perceived norms of consumer fairness, which are thought to cut strongly against sharp price hikes amid shortages.

This Article provides a new, empirically grounded perspective on the price gouging debate …

Q&A With Lina Khan, Chair Of The U.S. Federal Trade Commission And Mark Glick, Professor Of Economics At The University Of Utah, Lina M. Khan

Faculty Scholarship

Let me tell you a little about Lina. Lina attended Yale Law school and while a third-year law student she wrote her famous and influential article Amazon’s Anti-Trust Paradox. Then, after graduating from law school, she worked as the legal director at the Open Markets Institute and during that period she continued to write a large number of influential antitrust papers. She then joined the faculty of my alma mater, Columbia Law School. In 2019, she was appointed as counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Subcomittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law and, in 2021, President Biden appointed her …