Law Commons^™

Smart Cars, Telematics And Repair, Leah Chan Grinvald, Ofer Tur-Sinai

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Recent years have seen a surge in the use of automotive telematics. Telematics is the integration of telecommunications and informatics technologies. Using telematics in cars enables transmission of data communications between the car and other systems or devices. This opens up a wide range of possibilities, including the prospect of conducting remote diagnostics based on real-time access to the vehicle. Yet, as with any new technology, alongside its potential benefits, the use of automotive telematics could also have potential downsides. This Article explores the significant negative impact that the growing reliance on telematics systems could have on competition in the …

Who Gets To Operate On Herbie? Right To Repair Legislation In The Context Of Automated Vehicles, Jennifer J. Huseby

Journal of Law and Mobility

You bought it, you own it, but do you have the right to repair it? As right-to-repair remains a hot topic in the context of consumer electronics such as smartphones, one must consider the ramifications it may have for the automated vehicle (“AV”) industry. As the backdrop for one of the first legislative victories for right-to-repair, the automobile industry has continued to push for the expansion of right-to-repair to cover increased access to telematics and exceptions to proprietary software controls. However, as we revisit the issue for more highly connected and automated vehicles, it is important to assess the unique …

Fetishizing Copies, Jessica Litman

Book Chapters

Our copyright laws encourage authors to create new works and communicate them to the public, because we hope that people will read the books, listen to the music, see the art, watch the films, run the software, and build and inhabit the buildings. That is the way that copyright promotes the Progress of Science. Recently, that not-very-controversial principle has collided with copyright owners’ conviction that they should be able to control, or at least collect royalties from, all uses of their works. A particularly ill-considered manifestation of this conviction is what I have decided to call copy-fetish. This is the …

Why Intra-Brand Dealer Competition Is Irrelevant To The Price Effects Of Tesla's Vertical Integration, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

"In recent years, Tesla Motors (recently renamed Tesla) has been engaged in a state-by-state ground way for the right to distribute it’s all-electric vehicles directly to consumers. The car dealers' lobby, with the political backing of General Motors, has fiercely battled back, relying on decades-old state dealer protection laws to argue that Tesla is legally bound to distribute through franchised dealers. Through a combination of favorable state legislative and judicial decisions, Tesla has won the right to distribute directly in many states, but remains categorically barred from direct distribution in important states like Michigan and Texas--and hence all direct distribution …

Standing In The Way Of The Ftaia: Exceptional Applications Of Illinois Brick, Jennifer Fischell

Michigan Law Review

In 1982, Congress enacted the Foreign Antitrust Trade Improvements Act (FTAIA) to resolve uncertainties about the international reach and effect of U.S. antitrust laws. Unfortunately, the FTAIA has provided more questions than answers. It has been ten years since the Supreme Court most recently interpreted the FTAIA, and crucial questions and circuit splits abound. One of these questions is how to understand the convergence of the direct purchaser rule (frequently referred to as the Illinois Brick doctrine) and the FTAIA. Under the direct purchaser rule, only those who purchase directly from antitrust violators are typically permitted to sue under section …

Three Words And The Future Of The Affordable Care Act, Nicholas Bagley

Articles

As an essential part of its effort to achieve near universal coverage, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) extends sizable tax credits to most people who buy insurance on the newly established health care exchanges. Yet several lawsuits have been filed challenging the availability of those tax credits in the thirty-four states that refused to set up their own exchanges. The lawsuits are premised on a strained interpretation of the ACA that, if accepted, would make a hash of other provisions of the statute and undermine its effort to extend coverage to the uninsured. The courts should reject this latest effort …

Campbell At 21/Sony At 31, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

When copyright lawyers gather to discuss fair use, the most common refrain is its alarming expansion. Their distress about fair use’s enlarged footprint seems completely untethered from any appreciation of the remarkable increase in exclusive copyright rights. In the nearly forty years since Congress enacted the 1976 copyright act, the rights of copyright owners have expanded markedly. Copyright owners’ demands for further expansion continue unabated. Meanwhile, they raise strident objections to proposals to add new privileges and exceptions to the statute to shelter non-infringing uses that might be implicated by their expanded rights. Copyright owners have used the resulting uncertainty …

The Fragmented Regulation Of Investment Advice: A Call For Harmonization, Christine Lazaro, Benjamin P. Edwards

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Decades of short-term thinking and regulatory fixes created the bewilderingly complex statutory and regulatory structures governing the giving of personalized investment advice to retail customers. Although deeply flawed, the current systems remain entrenched because of the difficulties inherent in making radical alterations. Importantly, the current patchwork systems do not seem to serve retail customers particularly well. Retail customers tend to make predictable and costly mistakes in allocating their assets. Some of this occurs because many investors lack basic financial literacy. A recent study released by the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”) on financial literacy among investors …

The Volcker Rule, Banking Entities, And Covered Funds Activities, Jeffrey Koh, Kyle Gaughan

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

With the passage of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, Congress instituted a host of new laws attempting to protect consumers from the types of risky trading that led to the 2008 economic crisis. However, many of the new rules and regulations, including the Volcker Rule, are yet to fully take effect. Among other restrictions, the Volcker Rule attempts to curtail risky trading by limiting banking entity investments in private equity and venture capital funds. As the Volcker Rule nears its implementation deadline, banking entities are concerned that they will face substantial losses in having to comply with the Volcker Rule by …

Opening Schumer’S Box: The Empirical Foundations Of Modern Consumer Finance Disclosure Law, Hosea H. Harvey

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article explores the fundamental failure of Congress’ twenty-five-year quest to utilize disclosure as the primary tool to both regulate credit card issuers and educate consumers. From inception until present, reforms to this disclosure regime, even when premised on judgment and decision-making behavioralism, were nomothetic in orientation and ignored clear differences in population behavior and the heterogeniety of consumers. Current law prohibits credit card issuers from acquiring consumer socio-demographic data and prevents issuers and regulators from using market and policy experimentation to enhance disclosure’s efficacy. To explain why this regime was structured this way and why it must change, this …

The Tempting Of Antitrust: Robert Bork And The Goals Of Antitrust Policy, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

Of all Robert Bork’s many important contributions to antitrust law, none was more significant than his identification of economic efficiency, disguised as consumer welfare, as the sole normative objective of U.S. antitrust law. The Supreme Court relied primarily on Bork’s argument that Congress intended the Sherman Act to advance consumer welfare in making its landmark statement in Reiter v. Sonotone that “Congress designed the Sherman Act as a ‘consumer welfare prescription.’” This singular normative vision proved foundational to the reorientation of antitrust law away from an interventionist, populist, Brandeisian, and vaguely Jeffersonian conception of antitrust law as a constraint on …

Playing With Fire: Proceeding Cautiously With Reforms To The Michigan Fireworks Safety Act, Nicholas Pietropaulo

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

On January 1, 2012, the Michigan Fireworks Safety Act went into effect. It marked a significant change in how the state of Michigan treats the sale and use of “consumer fireworks.” Effectively, the new statute authorizes the sale and use of Roman Candles, bottle rockets, aerials, and other fireworks that had previously been banned. Almost immediately, challenges and complaints were raised. On one side, eight fireworks vendors challenged the constitutionality of one of the law’s provisions that required such vendors to purchase insurance at an arguably unreasonable rate. The court dismissed that case, holding that it could not be said …

Re-Thinking Health Insurance, Hans Biebl

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

In May 2009, while promoting the legislation that would become the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), President Obama said that rising health care costs threatened the balance sheets of both the federal government and private enterprise. He noted that any increase in health care spending consumes funds that “companies could be using to innovate and to grow, making it harder for them to compete around the world.” Despite the rancorous debate that surrounded this health care legislation and which culminated with the Supreme Court’s decision in National Federation of Independent Businesses, the PPACA was not a radical piece …

Abuse Prevention 2005, James J. White

Articles

Today I do not debate the empirical question (what is the cause of the increase in bankruptcy filings?) nor do I address the buried moral question (who deserves the protection of bankruptcy law?). Rather, I speculate about the consequences of 2005 amendments to the Bankruptcy Code and about the reasons it will achieve or fail to achieve the goals of its sponsors. Along the way I hope to learn something about how law changes, or fails to change behavior.

War And Peace: The 34th Annual Donald C. Brace Lecture, Jessica D. Litman

Other Publications

I'd like to thank the Copyright Society and the Brace committee for inviting me to speak to you this evening. I am honored that you invited me to give this lecture. I want to talk a little bit about war - copyright war - and then I want to talk a little bit about peace. It's become conventional that we're in the middle of a copyright war.' I tried to track down who started calling it that, and what I can tell you is that about ten years ago, about the time that copyright lawyers everywhere were arguing about the …

Applying 42 U.S.C. § 1981 To Claims Of Consumer Discrimination, Abby Morrow Richardson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note explores several interesting legal questions regarding the proper interpretation of 42 U.S.C. § 1981, which prohibits racial discrimination in contracting, when discrimination arises in the context of a consumer retail contract. The Note further explores how the Fifth Circuit's and other federal courts' narrow interpretation of § 1981's application in a retail setting (which allows plaintiffs to invoke the statute only when they have been prevented from completing their purchases) is contrary to the statute's express language, congressional intent, and to evolving concepts of contract theory, all of which reflect a commitment to the strict enforcement of civil …

La Responsabilisation De L'Economie: What The United States Can Learn From The New French Law On Consumer Overindebtedness, Jason J. Kilborn

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article on the French law continues a study of European consumer debt-relief systems, which the author began previously in an article on the German system. With rapid legal and practical developments in consumer debt-relief law, Europe provides an excellent comparative legal laboratory for observing the potential benefits and pitfalls of consumer bankruptcy reforms. In particular, French and German experiences with long-term payment plans shed useful light on the great debate raging in the United States over similar plans.

Death And Resurrection Of Secured Credit, James J. White

Articles

The Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978 (the Code) posed palpable threats to secured creditors. It was drafted by a commission that was at least as concerned with the rights of debtors as with the rights of creditors. It was modified and adopted by a Congress that might have been the most liberal since World War II and signed into law by President Carter at the apogee of the left's power, two years before the Reagan election that marked the rise of the right and the beginning of the left's decline. The power of the left was exerted most forcefully on …

Regulating Target Marketing And Other Race-Based Advertising Practices, Ross D. Petty, Anne-Marie G. Harris, Toni Broaddus, William M. Boyd Iii

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Recognizing the significant role that advertising plays in American life, this article examines the phenomenon of race-based targeted marketing as a contributing factor to the racial tension of our media age and evaluates the role of government regulation in preventing the dissemination of racist messages through advertising. In Part I, the article first looks at the evolution of "mass" marketing into today's standard use of targeted marketing techniques, and especially how those techniques can sometimes have racist effects. In Part II, the article discusses both measurable and esoteric harms of cultural racism. Part III examines existing laws designed to regulate …

Purchasing While Black: How Courts Condone Discrimination In The Marketplace, Matt Graves

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Given the sweeping language of § 1981 and 1982, it cannot be that sellers of goods can engage in intentional discrimination, so long as they make relatively minor attempts to cover it up. By exploring the interaction between substantive law, procedural law, legal culture, and real-world context, Graves seeks to demonstrate that judges cannot offer any legal or practical justification for heightened pleading requirements in § 1981 and 1982 actions. Through this argument, a conclusion is reached that § 1981 and 1982 plaintiffs must be given the same opportunity to litigate their claims that virtually all other plaintiffs are given. …

Freeing The Tortious Soul Of Express Warranty Law, James J. White

Articles

I suspect that most American lawyers and law students regard express warranty as neither more nor less than a term in a contract, a term that is subject to conventional contract rules on formation, interpretation, and remedy. Assume, for example, that a buyer sends a purchase order to a seller and the purchase order specifies the delivery of 300 tons of "prime Thomas cold rolled steel." The acknowledgment also describes the goods to be sold as "prime Thomas cold rolled steel." Every American lawyer would agree that there is a contract to deliver such steel and furthermore would conclude that …

Arriving At Reasonable Alternative Design: The Reporters' Travelogue, James A. Henderson Jr., Aaron D. Twerski

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Substantial commentary and controversy have been generated by the requirement in the new Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability that plaintiffs in most (but not all) cases involving claims of defective product design show that a reasonable alternative design was available and that failure to adopt the alternative rendered the defendant's design not reasonably safe. Henderson and Twerski explain the origins of that requirement in American products liability case law and show that it is not only the majority position but also comports with widely shared views regarding the proper objectives of our liability system. Although consumer expectations cannot serve …

Section 707(B) Of The Bankruptcy Code: A Roadmap With A Proposed Standard For Defining Substantial Abuse, David L. Balser

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note examines these questions and proposes a standard for determining "substantial abuse." Part I provides an overview of Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code. Part II discusses the legislative history of section 707(b). Part III examines the jurisdictional and procedural questions raised by the section and attempts to define what Congress meant by "primarily consumer debts" and "on [a court's] own motion." Part IV proposes a two-part standard for determining "substantial abuse." This standard suggests that courts should find "substantial abuse" whenever a debtor acts in bad faith or is able to repay 100% of his debts over the …

Personal, Living Or Family Matters And The Value Added Tax, L. Hart Wright

Michigan Law Review

No tax is ever implemented in a manner which is perfectly responsive to the logical implications of its basic purpose. VAT is no exception.

Those who foster this tax basically intend that ultimate tax incidence be suffered only by individuals and then only in the degree to which they dip into society's pool of consumer-type goods and services. But their implementing legislation is always designed to fall short of reaching all consumer-type goods and services. Ullman's proposed Tax Restructuring Act of 1979 would have been no exception. Under it, a substantial proportion of all such benefits actually would have been …

Consumer Warranty Claims Against Companies In Chapter 11 Reorganizations, Elizabeth Warner

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article examines the rights of individuals who have purchased warranted goods from a business that subsequently undergoes reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978. Part I establishes that warranty rights are claims in bankruptcy and outlines the procedure that must be followed by a creditor for distribution from the debtor's estate. Part II focuses on how warranty claims are treated in Chapter 11. Part III discusses ways to alleviate the warranty creditor's representational burden, particularly through the intervention and aid of public interest groups. This article concludes that . warranty creditors will receive favorable treatment …

Efts: Consumer Protection Under The Ucc, Susan E. Jinnett

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In view of the economic significance of the payments system, the laws governing it must be equitable and comprehensive. The development of the commercial law applicable to EFTS's, however, currently lags behind the growth of these systems. Threats to the integrity of EFTS's stem from lost, stolen, or forged access cards, illegal taps into communication lines, physical impairment of the equipment, or improper programming. The legal rights and liabilities of consumers where the integrity of an EFTS has been breached remains unclear, in part because the status of EFTS's under current law is uncertain. The rights of the parties involved …

Information Disclosure And Consumer Behavior: An Empirical Evaluation Of Truth-In-Lending, William K. Brandt, George S. Day

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article offers some empirical insight into the debate over the efficacy of disclosure legislation. The primary concern is the effect of the Act on (1) the level of consumer knowledge of interest rates and finance charges; (2) the extent of comparison shopping; and (3) the decisions to postpone purchases, to use cash instead of credit, or to reduce the finance charges by increasing the downpayment or reducing the number of payments. The article also evaluates patterns of consumer behavior and credit-granting procedures which may constrain the long-run potential of TIL.

Legislative Restriction Of Creditor Powers And Remedies: A Case Study Of The Negotiation And Drafting Of The Wisconsin Consumer Act, Jeffrey Davis

Michigan Law Review

This Article discusses the background, negotiation, and drafting of selected WCA restrictions on creditor powers and remedies and compares those provisions to the analogous restrictions proposed by other reform measures. In addition to the UCCC, the MCCA and the WCA, two other major works must be considered in any discussion of consumer-credit legislation. First is Working Redraft No. 4 of the UCCC (UCCC Redraft). This proposed revision, published in December 1972, represents a marked change in the UCCC. Many provisions favorable to the consumer have been added, and many of the parallel provisions on sales and loans have been consolidated. …

New Jersey Retail Installment Sales Act, Eric A. Oesterle

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The effect of the enactment of the New Jersey bill is that a "retail buyer" may now assert against an assignee of the installment contract or subsequent "holder" of the negotiable note any defenses he has against the retail installment seller. The new law would appear to be one of the most comprehensive laws of its type to be enacted. However, the draftsmen apparently left a significant loophole, appropriately termed the "specious cash sale,” which, if exploited, could negate the intended effect of the new law. This note will analyze the bill, compare it with the relevant provisions of the …

Federal Jurisdiction--Protective Jurisdiction And Adoption As Alternative Techniques For Conferring Jurisdiction On Federal Courts In Consumer Class Actions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

"Consumer protection" has come of age. The heightened appreciation of the consumer's plight has not been matched, however, by an equal commitment to providing effective programs for vindicating his cause. As a practical matter the consumer may be unable to assert his rights. Suits to enforce consumer rights are costly and are not likely to be brought when each individual claim is counted only in the tens of dollars.