Law Commons^™

Celebrity Endorsements In Non-Traditional Advertising: How The Ftc Regulations Fail To Keep Up With The Kardashians, Leah W. Feinman

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Advertisers have used the rise of reality television, social media, and the public's fascination with celebrities to connect with consumers in new and non-traditional ways. With these new techniques come new concerns over consumer protection. When an advertisement does not look like an advertisement, consumers can easily be misled. In 2009, the FTC implemented a set of Guides which were intended to clarify and interpret the regulations enforced by the FTC, and advise the public on how to conduct affairs regarding sponsorship disclosure, specifically in new media. As the note describes, the Guides are insufficient as applied to non-traditional advertising …

Do I Own This Car - The Supreme Court Creates A Standard For Bapcpa Car Ownership, Anne Benton Hucker

Missouri Law Review

The case was Ransom v. FIA Card Services, N.A., and the dispute was whether, under the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA), Appellant Jason Ransom should be able to claim a vehicle ownership expense for purposes of Chapter 13 bankruptcy for the unencumbered car that he owned. Practitioners in the bankruptcy field had been watching the progression of this case and were eager to learn the Court's resolution of the issue. The interest was due to two reasons. First, the outcome of the case would affect approximately 250,000 Chapter 13 petitioners. Second, the case would resolve …

Consumer Protection In Choice Of Law, Giesela Ruhl

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

An Overview And Analysis Of The National Unfair Contract Terms Provisions, Loren Holly, Dan Jerker B. Svantesson

Dan Svantesson

The Commonwealth Parliament has recently introduced the Australian Consumer Law, a legislative regime for a national consumer protection framework. One of the most significant changes to consumer protection within Australia has been the introduction of provisions governing unfair contract terms within consumer contracts. This article outlines the new provisions and examines the way in which the law is likely to be applied by the courts, with reference to relevant case law relating to similar provisions found in legislation in Victoria and New South Wales and United Kingdom.

Learning From Financial History: An Academic Never Forgets, David J. Reiss

David J Reiss

Those with short-term memories have been dominating our debate over the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They argue that the financial industry has learned its lesson and they point to a more rational marketplace today. But the Bureau was designed to regulate the subprime mortgage market and other consumer credit markets through the credit cycle. A strong Bureau should be built today to deal with the inevitable irrational exuberance of lenders and consumers once the cycle rises from its current depths to the heights of tomorrow.

Implementing Dodd-Frank: A Review Of The Cftc‟S Rulemaking Process: Testimony, Michael Greenberger

Congressional Testimony

The Relationship of Unregulated OTC Derivatives to the Meltdown. It is now accepted wisdom that it was the non-transparent, poorly capitalized, and almost wholly unregulated over-the-counter (“OTC”) derivatives market that lit the fuse that exploded the highly vulnerable worldwide economy in the fall of 2008. Because tens of trillions of dollars of these financial products were pegged to the economic performance of an overheated and highly inflated housing market, the sudden collapse of that market triggered under-capitalized or non-capitalized OTC derivative guarantees of the subprime housing investments. Moreover, the many undercapitalized insurers of that collapsing market had other multi-trillion dollar …

Know Your Customer - Or Not, Genci Bilali

Genci Bilali

“Know Your Customer” (KYC) is the due diligence and bank regulation that banks and other financial institutions perform in order to identify their clients and ascertain relevant information pertinent to doing financial business with them. The KYC policies are largely applied from banks and other financial institutions not only to prevent identity theft fraud, money laundering and terrorist financing but also to regulate the risk in business of lending and investment banking activities between banks and their customers.

Commercial and investment banks failed to comply and implement fully the KYC policies in lending monies and selling financial products to their …

A Warning Signal That Justifies Precautionary Chemical Regulation: Exploitation Of The Availability Heuristic By Economically Motivated Actors, Nathan H. Ostrander

Nathan H. Ostrander

A WARNING SIGNAL THAT JUSTIFIES PRECAUTIONARY CHEMICAL REGULATION: EXPLOITATION OF THE AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC BY ECONOMICALLY MOTIVATED ACTORS By Nathan Ostrander Corporations often promote fears among consumers and then sell products to alleviate those induced fears. Certain fears are particularly susceptible to heightened anxiety because they are vulnerable to the availability heuristic: the cognitive tendency to overestimate the occurrence of an event if it is easily brought to mind, or is available in our consciousness, which leads to errors in risk assessment. Acutely aware of the universal tendency to misjudge certain risks, corporations, acting rationally and in conformity with profit-maximizing behavior, …

Know Your Customer - Or Not, Genci Bilali

Genci Bilali

“Know Your Customer” (KYC) is the due diligence and bank regulation that banks and other financial institutions perform in order to identify their clients and ascertain relevant information pertinent to doing financial business with them. The KYC policies are largely applied from banks and other financial institutions not only to prevent identity theft fraud, money laundering and terrorist financing but also to regulate the risk in business of lending and investment banking activities between banks and their customers.

Commercial and investment banks failed to comply and implement fully the KYC policies in lending monies and selling financial products to their …

From The Schoolhouse To The Poorhouse: The Credit Card Act's Failure To Adequately Protect Young Consumers, Eboni S. Nelson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Safety First? The Role Of Emotion In Safety Product Betrayal Aversion, Jonathan Koehler, Andrew D. Gershoff

Faculty Working Papers

Consumers often face decisions about whether to purchase products that are intended to protect them from possible harm. However, safety products rarely provide perfect protection and sometimes "betray" consumers by causing the very harm they are intended to prevent. Examples include vaccines that may cause disease and air bags that may explode with such force that they cause death. Expanding research on betrayal aversion, this study examines the role of emotions in consumers' tendency to choose safety options that provide less overall protection in order to eliminate a very small probability of harm due to safety product betrayal. In five …

An Essay On Torts: States Of Argument, Marshall S. Shapo

Faculty Working Papers

This essay summarizes high points in torts scholarship and case law over a period of two generations, highlighting the "states of argument" that have characterized tort law over that period. It intertwines doctrine and policy. Its doctrinal features include the tradtional spectrum of tort liability, the duty question, problems of proof, and the relative incoherency of damages rules. Noting the cross-doctrinal role of tort as a solver of functional problems, it focuses on major issues in products liability and medical malpractice. The essay discusses such elements of policy as the role of power in tort law, the tension between communitarianism …

The Rome I Regulation Rules On Party Autonomy For Choice Of Law: A U.S. Perspective, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

This chapter was presented at a conference in Dublin on the (then) new Rome I Regulation of the European Union in the fall of 2009. It contrasts the Rome I rules on party autonomy with those in the United States. In particular, it considers the rules in the Rome I Regulation that ostensibly protect consumers by discouraging party agreement on a pre-dispute basis to the law governing a consumer contract. These rules are compared with the absence of private international law restrictions on choice of forum and choice of law in the United States, even in consumer contracts. The result …

Not With A Bang, But A Whimper: Congress's Proposal To Overturn The Supreme Court's Leegin Decision With The Discount Pricing Consumer Protection Act Of 2009, Ariana E. Gillies

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal

No abstract provided.

From The Schoolhouse To The Poorhouse: The Credit Card Act's Failure To Adequately Protect Young Consumers, Eboni S. Nelson

Villanova Law Review

The article discusses the Credit Card Act of 2009 specifically its provisions aiming to protect college-aged consumers. The author cites the students' high debt figures and discusses the negative impact on their academic, personal and future professional lives. He identifies loopholes that have enabled circumventions and deliberates on proposals which include increases in age and ability-to-pay requirements, limits to increasing credit limits and imposition of usury or interest rate caps.

Biasing Brands, Jeremy N. Sheff

Faculty Publications

The dominant search-costs model of trademark law posits that consumers choose products to satisfy their preferences by analytically mapping those preferences to product information that trademarks efficiently provide. This Article tests these descriptive claims against empirical and theoretical research in marketing and consumer psychology, particularly the concept of "brand equity": the value to a firm or its customers of a brand and of the firm's efforts to build and maintain that brand.

Internally complex brand equity models, juxtaposed with empirical findings in related psychology and marketing research, challenge the descriptive accuracy of the search-costs model. In particular, branding efforts can …

Malpractice Liability Related To Foreign Outsourcing Of Legal Services, Vincent R. Johnson, Stephen C. Loomis

Faculty Articles

The outsourcing of client-related tasks to service providers in other countries is likely to generate malpractice claims against American law firms. This Article discusses the wide range of theories under which an outsourcing American law firm may be liable for its own negligence or for the actions of outsourcing providers. These theories include negligence by the outsourcing law firm, vicarious liability for the conduct of independent contractors, and vicarious liability for the conduct of business partners.

Book Review: The Subprime Virus: Reckless Credit, Regulatory Failure, And Next Steps, David J. Reiss

David J Reiss

John Godfrey Saxe’s 19th century poem, “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” opens with six learned men

Who went to see the Elephant

(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind.

The financial crisis is the Elephant of our time. Over the last couple of years, more than six wise men and women have written books purporting to explain the financial crisis and many more such books are surely in the works. Most of these wise ones suffer from the same limitations as the poem’s learned men. As each reaches out, he or she …

Know Your Customer - Or Not, Genci Bilali

Genci Bilali

“Know Your Customer” (KYC) is the due diligence and bank regulation that banks and other financial institutions perform in order to identify their clients and ascertain relevant information pertinent to doing financial business with them. The KYC policies are largely applied from banks and other financial institutions not only to prevent identity theft fraud, money laundering and terrorist financing but also to regulate the risk in business of lending and investment banking activities between banks and their customers.

Commercial and investment banks failed to comply and implement fully the KYC policies in lending monies and selling financial products to their …