Law Commons^™

Unwaivable: Public Enforcement Claims And Mandatory Arbitration, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary Friedman

Articles

This essay, written for a conference on the “pathways and hurdles” that lie ahead in consumer litigation, is the first to examine the implications of California’s recent jurisprudence holding public enforcement claims unwaivable in standard-form contracts of adhesion, and the inevitable clash with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisional law interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act. With its rich history of rebuffing efforts to deprive citizens of public rights through private contract, California provides an ideal laboratory for exploring this escalating conflict.

Report To The Wisconsin Office Of Lawyer Regulation: Analysis Of Grievances Filed In Criminal And Family Matters From 2013-2016, Leslie C. Levin, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

In many states, the highest number of docketed grievances arise out of criminal and family law matters. This report analyzes the 4,898 grievances filed with the Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation (“OLR”) in family or criminal law matters during the period from 2013-2016. The OLR provided the data, enabling analysis of the grievances by gender, age, length of time since law school graduation, type of matter, prior experience with diversion or discipline, and geographical location. The data also revealed the frequency of allegations by practice matter, the types of allegations that led to discipline, and the frequency with which lawyers …

Smart Contracts And The Illusion Of Automated Enforcement, Danielle D'Onfro

Scholarship@WashULaw

This symposium essay explores the barriers to deploying smart contracts in the consumer finance space: the humans themselves, existing consumer protection laws, and the other businesses who have financial contracts with consumers but that cannot deploy smart contracts. These three barriers render perfectly automated enforcement all but impossible. Nevertheless, there may be room for modifiable smart contracts in the consumer financial space although these contracts may be only marginally more efficient than traditional contracts.

The Risk Of An Anti-Consumer Cfpb, Christopher L. Peterson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The risks of an anti-consumer CFPB go beyond just those cases currently under investigation. America has a massive financial sector that is constantly evolving and reinventing itself. This striving for innovation and efficiency is, of course, one of the American financial system’s great advantages. Nevertheless, the Sun-Tzu-worshipping, MBA-wielding financiers that use boilerplate consumer credit contracts as weapons in their endless market-share battles are paying attention to what the agency is doing—and more importantly, to what it is not doing. A chilled CFPB law enforcement program will embolden the consumer finance industry to roll out more misleading advertising, more deceptive sales …

Individual Licensing Models And Consumer Protection, Lucie Guibault

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Copyright law is not primarily directed at consumers. Their interests are therefore only marginally accounted for, as the copyright rules exempt specific uses of works from the right holder’s control. This chapter examines the impact of digital technology on the position of consumers of licensed copyrighted content. While ownership of the physical embodiment of a work does not entail the ownership of the rights in the work, how does copyright law deal with ‘disembodied’ works? Whereas digital content is now commonly distributed on the basis of individual licensing schemes, what does it mean for consumers? Do they have a claim …

Crimes And Medical Care On Board Cruise Ships: Do The Statistics Fit The Crimes?, Leticia M. Diaz, Barry H. Dubner, Nicole Mckee

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Symposium On Commercial Speech And Public Health, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

Americans have access to more health-related information today than ever before. Consumers are bombarded with medical messages and flooded with health-based claims. Television and magazine advertisements inform consumers about everything from insomnia and erectile dysfunction to the importance of dietary fiber and the allegedly wondrous properties of pomegranates. Product labels and promotions provide more food for thought about fat, sodium, and carbohydrates; nutritional supplement makers further supplement consumer nutritional information. Were that not enough, the internet provides access to still more data (and opinion), much of it of questionable provenance and reliability.

Anticonsumer Effects Of Union Mergers: An Antiitrust Solution, Robert H. Lande, Richard O. Zerbe Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Should unions and corporations be treated identically under the antitrust laws? This article explores this provocative question by examining whether union mergers should be subject to the antitrust laws. Currently unions and corporations are treated very differently. Large corporate mergers are blocked if their effect "may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly". They are permitted if they are likely to be benign, procompetitive, or proconsumer.

Collective bargaining, by contrast, enjoys a broad exemption from the antitrust laws. If they follow appropriate procedures, unions - even unions that, when taken together, cover all workers within …

Reporting Substantial Product Safety Hazards Under The Consumer Product Safety Act: The Products Liability Interface, Timothy Zick

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.