Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

The New Handshake: Where We Are Now, Amy J. Schmitz, Colin Rule

Faculty Publications

The internet has empowered consumers in new and exciting ways. It has opened more efficient avenues for consumers to buy just about anything. Want proof? Just pull out your smartphone, swipe your finger across the screen a few times, and presto – your collector’s edition Notorious RBG bobblehead is on its way from China. Unfortunately, however, the internet has not yet delivered on its promise to improve consumer protection.

Won’T Get Fooled Again: Why Vw’S Emissions Deception Is Illegal In Europe And How To Improve The Eu’S Auto Regulatory System, Kevin Tarsa

Boston College International and Comparative Law Review

Replete with greed, hubris, and deceit, the Volkswagen emissions scandal is not your typical case of corporate wrongdoing. With a price tag of $20 million in the United States, it is already one of the most expensive corporate scandals in history and has caused significant damage to the environment, public health, and the global economy. Dieselgate has had a majorly disproportionate impact on Europe, where nearly nine million of the eleven million affected cars are located. The financial cost of the scandal, however, has been confined almost entirely to the United States, due to a European Union (EU) regulation that ...

“Safe Harbor” On The Rocks: Ttb Label Approval For Beer, Wine, And Spirits, And The Uncertain Status Of The “Safe Harbor” Defense, Michael Mercurio

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

This Note examines the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB)’s label review process and the judicial split regarding the “safe harbor” doctrine in the context of alcoholic beverage labels. This Note observes that the judicial split is a result of the tension between two conflicting priorities stemming from the TTB’s purpose and identity: on one hand, courts apply Chevron deference to the TTB as a federal agency enforcing federal law, but on the other hand, courts aim to uphold the central purpose of the Federal Alcohol Administration (FAA) Act—protecting consumers from misinformation. Ultimately ...

Looking Backward, Moving Forward: What Must Be Remembered When Resolving The Right To Be Forgotten, Katherine Stewart

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In May 2014, the European Court of Justice decided Google Spain v. AEPD and González and granted citizens the right to be forgotten, rather, the right to request any search engine offering services to European consumers to remove certain results displayed after a search of a citizen’s name. This decision has also resulted in an ongoing battle between Google and the Commission Nationale de l’Infomatique et des Libertés (CNIL), France’s data protection authority. The CNIL believes that Google must apply the right to be forgotten to all domains worldwide, including Google.com. Google, however, has been reluctant ...

Who Will Protect The Consumers Of Trademarked Goods?, James Astrachan

University of Baltimore Law Review

Federal and state law recognizes multiple forms of intellectual property, including patents,1 copyrights,2 trademarks,3 and trade secrets.4 Alleged violations of patents and copyrights are required by statute to be litigated in the federal courts.5 Trademark rights can arise under the Federal Lanham Act6 or state law.7 Trademark infringement can be litigated in state or federal courts.8 Trade secrets arising under state statutes are litigated in state courts unless diversity jurisdiction exists and is pled.9

Infringement of intellectual property in the case of patents arises when a patented invention is used, manufactured or ...

A Motion To Compel Changes To Federal Arbitration Law: How To Remedy The Abuses Consumers Face When Arbitrating Disputes, Jeremy Mcmanus

Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice

Arbitration, as a form of alternative dispute resolution, is a favored method of settling legal disputes because it resolves disputes faster and more cost effectively than in-court litigation. Corporations often exploit the private nature of arbitration by including complex provisions in consumer contracts that require certain disputes to be resolved through arbitration. Consumers subject to these arbitration provisions often do not realize the existence of the provisions, and do not understand that because of undue corporate influence over arbitrators, arbitration tends to favor the corporations against which they arbitrate. Unfortunately, because the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that the ...

Weaponizing Citizen Suits: Second Circuit Revises The Burden Of Proof For Proving Sham Citizen Petitions In Apotex V. Acorda Therapeutics, Franklin Liu

Boston College Law Review

In 2016, in Apotex Inc. v. Acorda Therapeutics, Inc., the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that a generic drug company could not rely solely on the timing of the Food and Drug Administration’s (“FDA’s”) disposition of a citizen suit and approval of a generic application to state a claim under the Sherman Act based on sham litigation. By contrast, in 2009, in In re DDAVP Direct Purchaser Antitrust Litigation, the Second Circuit held that precisely such evidence was sufficient to state a Sherman Act claim. This Comment argues that the Second Circuit’s ...

Third Circuit Confirms The Class Arbitration "Clear And Unmistakable" Standard In Chesapeake Appalachia, Llc V. Scout Petroleum, Llc, Dealing A Blow To Consumers And Employees, Caitlin Toto

Boston College Law Review

Whether class action is available in an arbitration proceeding is a highly controversial topic with implications for all parties bound by such clauses. Due to the high stakes of class action arbitrability, it is essential that a neutral decisionmaker determine this question. Whether this decisionmaker is the court or the arbitrator, however, is contested and unresolved by the U.S. Supreme Court. Although undetermined by our highest court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has addressed this question. In Chesapeake Appalachia, LLC v. Scout Petroleum, LLC, the Third Circuit affirmed that the availability of class arbitration ...

The Role Of Antitrust Principles In Patent Monopolies: The Third Circuit Applies Antitrust Scrutiny To No-Ag Patent Settlements In Smithkline, Meghan Fay

Boston College Law Review

On June 26, 2015, in King Drug Co. of Florence v. Smithkline Beecham Corp., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that no-authorized generic agreements (“no-AG agreements”), in which a pioneer pharmaceutical manufacturer agrees not to introduce a generic drug, are subject to antitrust scrutiny under the Sherman Act. This Comment argues that the Third Circuit correctly extended the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis to non-cash settlement agreements. In Actavis, the Court held that a “reverse-payment settlement,” which compensates a generic manufacturer to delay market entry, creates monopolistic consequences and ...

Businesses Are People Too? Anomalies In Widening The Ambits Of "Consumer" Under Consumer Credit Law, Francina Cantatore, Brenda Marshall

Francina Cantatore

The Government’s Green Paper on National Credit reform canvasses the possibility of affording small businesses the same degree of protection as consumers under consumer credit legislation. Such a step will enable manufacturing businesses with fewer than 100 employees, and other businesses with fewer than 20 employees, to be treated as “consumers” with all the concomitant privileges that this classification implies, including the ability to rely on hardship provisions when unable to pay their debts. Small businesses already benefit from hardship provisions under compulsory external dispute resolution (EDR) scheme Rules imposed on consumer credit providers, with some anomalous results. The ...

Businesses Are People Too? Anomalies In Widening The Ambits Of "Consumer" Under Consumer Credit Law, Francina Cantatore, Brenda Marshall

Francina Cantatore

The Government’s Green Paper on National Credit reform canvasses the possibility of affording small businesses the same degree of protection as consumers under consumer credit legislation. Such a step will enable manufacturing businesses with fewer than 100 employees, and other businesses with fewer than 20 employees, to be treated as “consumers” with all the concomitant privileges that this classification implies, including the ability to rely on hardship provisions when unable to pay their debts. Small businesses already benefit from hardship provisions under compulsory external dispute resolution (EDR) scheme Rules imposed on consumer credit providers, with some anomalous results. The ...

Conceptualizing The Intentional Torts, Mark A. Geistfeld

New York University Law and Economics Working Papers

According to the most recent draft of the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Intentional Torts to Persons, the intentional torts protect the rightholder’s interests differently from negligence-based rules and strict liability, placing them into a distinct substantive category. This conceptualization, however, does not provide courts with adequate guidance on how to formulate the element of intent. Different formulations can protect the rightholder’s interests differently from negligence and strict liability, so something else must determine the appropriate way to formulate the element of intent.

The draft Restatement’s reasoning can be easily extended to provide a more useful conceptualization of ...

Regulating Fantasy Sports: A Practical Guide To State Gambling Laws, And A Proposed Framework For Future State Legislation, Marc Edelman

Indiana Law Journal

In recent months, the legal status of fantasy sports has undergone intense scrutiny, with the attorneys general of many states contending that certain formats of daily fantasy sports violate state gambling laws. In an effort to save the burgeoning daily fantasy sports industry, legislators in these states have proposed bills to affirmatively legalize and regulate daily fantasy sports. However, these bills often fail to adequately address the underlying consumer protection concerns pertaining to the industry.

This Article analyzes how U.S. states currently regulate the fantasy sports marketplace and proposes a framework for future state laws to effectively regulate both ...

Misconstruing Whistleblower Immunity Under The Defend Trade Secrets Act, Peter S. Menell

Nevada Law Journal Forum

In crafting the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA), Congress went beyond the federalization of state trade secret protection to tackle a broader social justice problem: the misuse of nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) to discourage reporting of illegal activity in a variety of areas. The past few decades have witnessed devastating government contracting abuses, regulatory violations, and deceptive financial schemes that have hurt the public and cost taxpayers and investors billions of dollars. Congress recognized that immunizing whistleblowers from the cost and risk of trade secret liability for providing information to the Government could spur law enforcement. But could this ...

Conceptualizing The Intentional Torts, Mark A. Geistfeld

New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

According to the most recent draft of the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Intentional Torts to Persons, the intentional torts protect the rightholder’s interests differently from negligence-based rules and strict liability, placing them into a distinct substantive category. This conceptualization, however, does not provide courts with adequate guidance on how to formulate the element of intent. Different formulations can protect the rightholder’s interests differently from negligence and strict liability, so something else must determine the appropriate way to formulate the element of intent.

The draft Restatement’s reasoning can be easily extended to provide a more useful conceptualization of ...

Foreclosure Diversion And Mediation In The States, Alan M. White

Georgia State University Law Review

The recent mortgage foreclosure crisis, whose economic effects are well known, transformed state legal structures governing the mortgage foreclosure process. What had been a relatively routine system of default judgments and auction sales has evolved into a negotiation and workout practice in which homeowners contest foreclosures, demand loan modifications and short sales, and propose other alternatives to foreclosures.

A profusion of state laws and court orders were adopted between 2008 and 2014 with the aim of promoting negotiated foreclosure alternatives. These laws have produced a variety of experiments in the “laboratories of democracy.” The defaults—whether home loans are renegotiated ...

Rethinking Criminal Contempt In The Bankruptcy Courts, John A. E. Pottow, Jason S. Levin

Law & Economics Working Papers

A surprising number of courts believe that bankruptcy judges lack authority to impose criminal contempt sanctions. We attempt to rectify this misunderstanding with a march through the historical treatment of contempt-like powers in bankruptcy, the painful statutory history of the 1978 Bankruptcy Code (including the exciting history of likely repealed 28 U.S.C. § 1481), and the various apposite rules of procedure. (Fans of the All Writs Act will delight in its inclusion.) But the principal service we offer to the bankruptcy community is dismantling the ubiquitous and persistent belief that there is some form of constitutional infirmity with "mere ...

It Depends: Recasting Internet Clickwrap, Browsewrap, "I Agree," And Click-Through Privacy Clauses As Waivers Of Adhesion, Charles E. Maclean

Cleveland State Law Review

Digital giants, enabled by America’s courts, Congress, and the Federal Trade Commission, devise click-through, clickwrap, browsewrap, "I Agree" waivers, and other legal fictions that purport to evidence user "consent" to consumer privacy erosions. It is no longer enough to justify privacy invasions as technologically inevitable or as essential to the American economy. As forced consent is no consent at all, privacy policies must advance with the technology. This article discusses adhesion waivers, the potential for FTC corrective action, and a comparison to privacy policies of the European Union.

A Generic A Day Keeps The Lawyer Away, Cara Brumfield

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Social Data Discovery And Proportional Privacy, Agnieszka Mcpeak

Cleveland State Law Review

Social media platforms aggregate large amounts of personal information as "social data" that can be easily downloaded as a complete archive. Litigants in civil cases increasingly seek out broad access to social data during the discovery process, often with few limits on the scope of such discovery. But unfettered access to social data implicates unique privacy concerns—concerns that should help define the proper scope of discovery.

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, as amended in 2015, already contain the tools for crafting meaningful limits on intrusive social data discovery. In particular, the proportionality test under Rule 26 weighs the ...