Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

The Financialization Of Frequent Flyer Miles: Calling For Consumer Protection, Ari Goldfine

Vanderbilt Law Review

Airlines' frequent flyer programs operate more like a monetary system, with points as a form of currency, than a typical discount or rewards plan. In fact, airlines' power over points is even more extensive than that of a central bank over currency beyond simply determining how many points are in circulation, airlines also control the value of points at redemption, how many points consumers can accumulate, and when points expire. This financialized form of frequent flyer programs has proven to be lucrative. For the Big Four airlines, frequent flyer programs are worth markedly more than the business of providing air …

Consumer Justice: Do Europeans Know Something We Do Not?, Magdalena Tulibacka

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.

America's Next "Stop Model!": Model Deletion, Jevan Hutson, Ben Winters

Articles

This Essay explores the emergence of model deletion- the compelled destruction or dispossession of certain data, algorithms, models, and associated work products created or shaped by illegal means- as a remedy, right, and requirement for harmful applications of Al and ML systems. Part I examines model deletion's emergence as a consumer protection remedy and its conception as a positive right and regulatory requirement. Part II considers the constellation of federal and state actors, such as federal and state enforcement agencies and legislative bodies, who might seek model deletion to address particular Al and ML harms. Part III underscores the need …

Regulatory Approaches To Consumer Protection In The Financial Sector And Beyond: Towards A Smart Disclosure Regime?, Nydia Remolina, Yvonne Ai-Chi Loh, David Hardoon

International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice

Consumer and data protection policies often focus on consent and information disclosure. The purpose of these regulatory strategies is the protection of consumers by reducing some contracting failures, such as asymmetries of information and a lower bargaining power, especially in transactions involving complex issues such as financial products and sensitive personal data. In the past, regulators have responded to privacy and consumer protection by adopting what this article refers to as an “imperfectly informed regime”, in which consumers do not receive full information about the risks associated with their decisions, even if they are still protected through a variety of …

Between The Entrepreneurial Impetus For Higher Profits And Consumer Rights Or Types Of Unfair And Misleading Commercial Practices: Insights From Bulgaria, Silviya Atanasova Topleva

International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice

The application of unfair misleading commercial practices affects the economic interests of consumers, threatening legal security and the achievement of market equilibrium. In response to these imbalances, the law builds a solid regulatory network for consumer protection. In the codification of the protection of consumer interests from unfair commercial practices, an important place is occupied by secondary legislation of the EU, and in particular Directive 2005/29/EC concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market. The article presents a classification of the types of unfair misleading commercial practices based on the regulatory framework at the European and national level. The …

Reviewing The Organization Of The Consumer Right To Withdraw In Electronic Transactions In Qatar, Mahmoud Fayyad, Reinhard Steennot

International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice

This research identifies and analyses weaknesses in Qatar’s legal regulatory framework for the right to withdraw in electronic transactions, understands the causes of consumer dissatisfaction and their impact, and conducts a comparative analysis of European law to extract insights for improving Qatar’s legal regulations and organizational structure. This research employs a quantitative methodology, utilizing a survey administered to a random sample of 391 consumers. The survey will gather data on consumer perceptions, experiences, and satisfaction levels related to the right to withdraw in electronic transactions in Qatar. The results revealed a need for more confidence among Qatari consumers when purchasing …

The Reluctant Lawmaker. The European Union And The Regulation Of Gambling Between The Principle Of Free Circulation Of Services And Member States Prerogatives, Nadia Coggiola Ph.D

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

Abstract

Although the European Union legislator is generally very keen to rely primarily and sometimes even exclusively on economic considerations, and therefore to generally protect consumers’ interests, this attitude is largely different when gambling issues are a stake.

In fact, even if it is generally undisputed, also by the same European Union legislator, that authorized gambling contracts are to be considered as consumers’ contracts, when facing the regulation of gambling contracts, the European Union often restrains from using all of its legislative powers.

As a consequence, the European legislation on consumer’s contracts generally explicitly exclude from its application gambling contracts, …

Beyond Section 230 Liability For Facebook, Nancy S. Kim

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In October 2021, a former Facebook employee, Frances Haugen, publicly revealed that the company's internal research documented harms that its products caused some of its users. The company’s response was sadly predictable. It questioned the reliability of Haugen’s testimony, asserted its commitment to doing the right thing, and then diverted the public’s attention by changing its name to Meta. The company’s deny-and-distract tactics were, by now, all too familiar and provided few answers.

More than any other platform company, Facebook has found itself at the center of controversy. Its advertisement-supported business model relies upon user engagement which means that …

What A Data Privacy Law Should Look Like In West Virginia: Balancing Competing Interests Of Consumers And Businesses, Harrison Enright

West Virginia Law Review

Today’s businesses invariably leverage consumer data to create business insights, such as marketing strategies and consumer behavior analyses. As a result, consumers have placed an emphasis on data privacy and security. In response, many states have proposed comprehensive legislation aspiring to regulate the collection and usage of consumer data by businesses, grant individual rights to consumers, and provide for a method of enforcement. House Bill 3159 represents West Virginia’s most recent attempt at doing so, serving as an indication that the state is working diligently to enhance the data privacy of its residents.

Although enacting a comprehensive data privacy law …

Coercive Rideshare Practices: At The Intersection Of Antitrust And Consumer Protection Law In The Gig Economy, Christopher L. Peterson, Marshall Steinbaum

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This Essay considers antitrust and consumer protection liability for coercive practices vis-à-vis drivers that are prevalent in the rideshare industry. Resale price maintenance, nonlinear pay practices, withholding data, and conditioning data access on maintaining a minimum acceptance rate all curtail platform competition, sustaining a high-price, tacitly collusive equilibrium among the few incumbents. Moreover, concealing relevant trip data from drivers is both deceptive and unfair when the platforms are in full possession of the relevant facts. In the absence of these coercive practices, customers too would be better off due to platform competition, which would lower average prices by sharpening competition …

Animal Welfare Consumer Protection Litigation: Challenges And Possibilities For Bringing About More "Humane" Labeling Practices, Jaycie Thaemert

Animal Law Review

Consumer protection claims have become a critical tool for animal welfare advocates to attack the misrepresentations that animal agriculture producers make about the humane treatment of their animals. Currently, these claims are an important accountability mechanism, as “humane” labeling standards have not been adopted on the federal level. As consumers become increasingly focused on making ethical food-purchasing decisions, consumer protection claim lawsuits have become more and more successful, drawing the attention of attorneys within and outside of the animal welfare movement. The primary limitation of consumer protection claims in the animal welfare space is that these lawsuits do not actually …

Protecting Low-Income Consumers In The Era Of Digital Grocery Shopping: Implications For Wic Online Ordering, Qi Zhang, Priyanka Patel, Caitlin M. Lowery

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is now expected to allow participants to redeem their food benefits online, i.e., via online ordering, rather than only in-store. However, it is unclear how this new benefit redemption model may impact participants’ welfare since vendors may have an asymmetric information advantage compared with WIC customers. The WIC online ordering environment may also change the landscape for WIC vendors, which will eventually affect WIC participants. To protect WIC consumers’ rights in the new online ordering model, policymakers need an appropriate legal and regulatory framework. This narrative review provides that …

Senate Bill 2-A: The Laws It Changed And Its Impact On Past, Present, And Future Claims, Michael A. Cassel

St. Thomas Law Review

Florida was admitted as the 27th state on March 3, 1845. For the majority of its existence as a state, consumer protections have been a cornerstone of Florida insurance law. In 1893, as the state grew, the Florida legislature enacted the first statute which authorized the recovery of reasonable attorney fees against life and fire insurance companies. In 1982, recognizing the need for further consumer protections, Florida created the Civil Remedy statute authorizing a first-party civil action against insurers due to bad faith conduct; however, despite such consumer protections remaining necessary to “level the playing field” between corporations and consumers, …

Consumer Protection Of Persons With Disabilities Amidst The Covid-19, James Keith C. Heffron

Center for Business Research and Development

The Persons with Disabilities (PWD) sector was one of the most overlooked and affected sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic. As consumers, PWDs have suffered difficult challenges in the access of essential goods and services, including healthcare, and these challenges have been unduly aggravated because of the crisis. The article exposes and examines the negative impact of the crisis on the consumer rights and behavior of PWDs with a special focus on the novel barriers brought about by the pandemic on their right to access. The current pre-pandemic legislation is not adequate to protect PWDs from these novel barriers as there …

Detoxing From Clean Claims: Bridging The Gap Between "Clean" And "Dirty" Beauty, Alecsandra Dragus

William & Mary Business Law Review

The clean beauty industry has gained increasing popularity in the last couple of years. This has spurred the development of many brands and impacted what consumers look for in their products. This Note engages in the existing conversation in the beauty industry pertaining to "clean" products by showing that the lack of interference from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to set definitional criteria for what constitute ''clean" products has resulted in an increase in the commercialization of health-conscious consumer beliefs based on ambiguous and misleading information. These consumers are stuck in a loop …

Benign Language On Letters From Debt Collectors And Avoiding Violations Of The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, Sebastian West

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

The New Bailments, Danielle D’Onfro

Washington Law Review

The rise of cloud computing has dramatically changed how consumers and firms store their belongings. Property that owners once managed directly now exists primarily on infrastructure maintained by intermediaries. Consumers entrust their photos to Apple instead of scrapbooks; businesses put their documents on Amazon’s servers instead of in file cabinets; seemingly everything runs in the cloud. Were these belongings tangible, the relationship between owner and intermediary would be governed by the common-law doctrine of bailment. Bailments are mandatory relationships formed when one party entrusts their property to another. Within this relationship, the bailees owe the bailors a duty of care …

Assessment Of Consumer Protection Act 2019 To Support Tobacco Control In India, Ashok R. Patil

Articles

The use of tobacco products has been clearly established to cause significant medical and economic harm. While specific tobacco control legislation has been enacted in the form of the COTPA 2003, it is important to examine if other legislations can be utilised for regulation of tobacco consumption. One such legislation is the Consumer Protection Act 2019, which significantly expands the rights of consumers and protection given to them in terms of product safety and product quality. Accordingly, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of the Consumer Protection Act 2019 and the scope of utilising this legislation and the jurisprudence on …

Illuminating Manipulative Design: From "Dark Patterns" To Information Asymmetry And The Repression Of Free Choice Under The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, Wen-Ting Yang, Mark Leiser

Loyola Consumer Law Review

Dark patterns' are defined as 'tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to, like buying or signing up for something.' The term describes 'deceptive' and 'manipulative' techniques implemented when designing an app, website, or platform to change a user's behaviour in a way that would not have happened without the dark pattern. Yet much of the academic scholarship on the regulation of manipulative design has focused on privacy and data protection legislation. This article identifies seventeen common types of 'dark patterns'. It facilitates critical, legal, and regulatory dialogue by proposing a new …

Dynamic Pricing Algorithms, Consumer Harm, And Regulatory Response, Alexander Mackay, Samuel Weinstein

Articles

Pricing algorithms are rapidly transforming markets, from ride-sharing, to air travel, to online retail. Regulators and scholars have watched this development with a wary eye. Their focus so far has been on the potential for pricing algorithms to facilitate explicit and tacit collusion. This Article argues that the policy challenges pricing algorithms pose are far broader than collusive conduct. It demonstrates that algorithmic pricing can lead to higher prices for consumers in competitive markets and even in the absence of collusion. This consumer harm can be initiated by a single firm employing a superior pricing algorithm. Higher prices arise from …

Discrimination On Wheels: How Big Data Uses License Plate Surveillance To Put The Brakes On Disadvantaged Drivers, Nicole Mcconlogue

Faculty Scholarship

As scholarly discourse increasingly raises concerns about the negative societal effects of “fintech,” “dirty data,” and “technochauvinism,” a growing technology provides an instructive illustration of all three of these problems. Surveillance software companies are using automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology to develop predictive analytical tools. In turn, software companies market those tools to auto financers and insurers as a risk assessment input to evaluate consumers seeking to buy a car. Proponents of this technology might argue that more in-formation about consumer travel habits will result in more accurate and individualized risk predictions, potentially increasing vehicle ownership among marginalized groups. …

Regulating Charitable Crowdfunding, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

Journal Articles

Charitable crowdfunding is a global and rapidly growing new method for raising money to benefit charities and individuals in need. While mass fundraising has existed for more than a hundred years, crowdfunding is distinguishable from those earlier efforts because of its low cost, speed of implementation, and broad reach. Reflecting these advantages, it now accounts annually for
/="/">billions of dollars raised from tens of millions of donors through hundreds of Internet platforms such as Charidy, Facebook, GoFundMe, and GlobalGiving. Although most charitable crowdfunding campaigns raise only modest amounts, every year several efforts attract tens of millions of dollars in …

Consumer Protection In Ecommerce: A Case Study Of Egypt, Heba Habib

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines electronic contract regulation in the context of business-to-consumer transactions. The technological advancement and cross-border nature of e-commerce have posed significant challenges to the Egyptian legal framework highlighting the limitations of general commercial contract rules with regards to electronic contracts. This thesis argues that access to the courts is hindered by restrictive terms in the electronic contracts over which the Egyptian law has no jurisdictional power. Accordingly, private institutions set the rules in the e-contracts and enforce them through private methods leaving no room for state intervention to ensure the protection of consumers. Hence, the application of national …

Bully No More: Why Trademark Owners Engage In Trademark Overreach And How To Prevent It, Quynh La

Washington Law Review

At its core, trademark law exists as a tool for consumer protection. Thus, trademark owners use policing and enforcement to maintain a trademark’s goodwill, which in turn protects consumers from confusion. But policing and enforcement can lead to trademark overreach and bullying—which undermine the goal of trademark law. This Comment explains that trademark owners are incentivized to engage in aggressive enforcement tactics because courts weigh enforcement efforts in favor of trademark strength. And strong trademarks receive strong protection because such marks are more likely to succeed in trademark infringement litigation. To curb trademark bullying and realign trademark law with its …

The Guarantees Of Free Consent In Consumption Contracts Concluded Outside Trading Enterprises: A Comparative Study, Dr.Adnan Sarhan

UAEU Law Journal

The reason of consumer protection measures did not only result from his vulnerability, but also extends in the recent times to include misleading advertising techniques, the brilliant development in marketing in addition to the coercive nature of recent tools that are used in bargain and contracting. One of these tools is contract Outside Trading Enterprises, since a consumer is surprised by a person at his place, stop him in the street, break into his place of work or communicate with him to negotiate and contract him in spite of that a consumer does not see or preview the sold goods, …

The Lack Of Regulation In Preventing Greenwashing Of Cosmetics In The U.S., Alexa Riccolo

Journal of Legislation

If you walked through your local grocery or beauty store today, there is no doubt that you would be bombarded with thousands of different products. You may also observe that many labels accompanying these products utilize terms such as “organic,” “natural,” or “green” in their marketing efforts. Most consumers look to these labels and trust that the products are better for their health and the environment. In a recent study, over 80% of millennials believe that purchasing ecofriendly products not only improves their quality of life, but 75% of millennials are actively looking to make greener changes in their homes …

Algorithms In Business, Merchant-Consumer Interactions, & Regulation, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

Faculty Scholarship

The shift towards the use of algorithms in business has transformed merchant–consumer interactions. Products and services are increasingly tailored for consumers through algorithms that collect and analyze vast amounts of data from interconnected devices, digital platforms, and social networks. While traditionally merchants and marketeers have utilized market segmentation, customer demographic profiles, and statistical approaches, the exponential increase in consumer data and computing power enables them to develop and implement algorithmic techniques that change consumer markets and society as a whole. Algorithms enable targeting of consumers more effectively, in real-time, and with high predictive accuracy in pricing and profiling strategies. In …

The United States: Big Data, Little Regulation, Megan Valent

University of Miami Business Law Review

In the United States today, there is no single law to address the privacy concerns associated with the collection of consumer data. Lawmakers have introduced policies that seek to address data privacy at the federal level, but Congress has not yet acted to create a comprehensive law to protect consumers. On the contrary, in 2016, the European Union passed its General Data Protection Regulation to address the dangers associated with “Big Data” and to give consumers control over their data.

Unfortunately, in the United States consumers are often unaware of how their data is being handled and what is done …

Regulatory Approaches To Consumer Protection In The Financial Sector And Beyond: Toward A Smart Disclosure Regime?, Nydia Remolina, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez, Yvonne Ai-Chi Loh, David R. Hardoon

Centre for AI & Data Governance (2019-2025)

Traditionally, consumer and data protection policies evolved from issues of consent and information disclosure. The purpose of these regulatory approaches is the protection of consumers by reducing some contracting failures, such as asymmetries of information and a lower bargaining power, especially in transactions involving complex issues such as financial products and sensitive personal data. In the past, regulators have responded to privacy and consumer protection by adopting what this paper refers to as an “imperfectly informed regime”, in which consumers do not receive full information about the risks associated with their decisions, even if they are still protected through a …

No Money, Mo’ Problems: The Attitudes And Experiences Of Homeowners In Default, Tracy Douglas

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

This article discusses differences in foreclosure law, consumer protection, and mediation programs. Then, it will summarize relevant research on the topic of homeowners’ attitudes, financial knowledge, economic hardships, causes of default, and effectiveness of representation. Next, this article will outline the study’s design and methodology followed by the results from the data produced by the study. Then, the results will be analyzed. Finally, policy recommendations and reforms supported by the study’s evidence will be discussed.