Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

Vaccines And The Law, Michael Sanzo Ph.D.

Pepperdine Law Review

The last twenty years have seen a sea-change in the area of proving causation in the toxic tort setting, with courts demanding stronger, scientifically tested evidence. At the same time, a closely related debate has been raging about separating cause from coincidence under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act compensation program for injuries that might have been the result of vaccinations. The Vaccine Act created a no-fault compensation fund financed by a tax on childhood vaccines to address harms resulting from those vaccines. Unfortunately, Congress gave little direction with regard to the level of causal certainty that would be required …

Paper On The Business Case For Transparency, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

CCSI strongly supports the transparency of contracts and tax flows. CCSI shares the belief of many stakeholders that transparency is essential to leverage extractive industries for sustainable development and is in the mutual interest of all stakeholders. However, some industry players continue to voice the concern that increased transparency would be harmful for their business. Therefore, CCSI is working to also establish the business case for transparency.

In one such case, some industry players have been lobbying against the regulations developed by the Security and Exchange Commission to implement the mandatory disclosure provisions of the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform …

Burning Down The House Or Simply Rolling The Dice: A Comment On Section 621 Of The Dodd-Frank Act And Recommendation For Its Implementation, Joshua R. Rosenthal

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

Section 621 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act modifies the Securities Act of 1933 to prohibit the underwriter, placement agent, initial purchaser, or sponsor, or any affiliate or subsidiary of any such entity of an asset-backed financial product from betting against that very product for one year after the product’s initial sale. The rule prohibits anyone who structures or sells an asset-backed security or a product composed of asset-backed securities from going short, in the specified timeframe, on what they have sold, and labels such transactions as presenting material conflicts of interest. This Comment discusses traces …

The Ethics Of Unbranding, Jeremy N. Sheff

Faculty Publications

This Essay explores the ethical implications of the phenomenon of "unbranding" that has recently been discussed in popular and scholarly literature. It compares two extant definitions of unbranding and examines each under alternative ethical theories of trademark law, specifically deontological and consequentialist theories. With respect to each of these theories, the Essay examines the ethical questions raised by the existence of asymmetric information between brand owners and consumers. This includes asymmetries not only with regard to information about products, but also with regard to information about consumer decision-making processes. The latter asymmetry presents conflicts between deontological and consequentialist conclusions regarding …

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 …

Study On Online Hotel Reservation Systems, Frank Alleweldt, Klaus Tonner, Marc Mcdonald

Articles

This study, conducted by Civic Consulting, looks at both pre-contractual and contractual matters concerning online hotel reservation systems, examines relevant Community rules, identifies gaps and, where needed, discusses possible policy options. Key conclusions The study shows that the impact of Community law on online hotel

The Pending Credit Card Debt Meltdown: What's Happening In Your Wallet, Kathleen M. Moore

St. Thomas Law Review

AIG, the sub-prime market meltdown, bailouts for the Big Three automakers-it would be nice if bad things really only came in threes. But there is another crisis looming on the horizon, burgeoning credit card debt. Indeed, a coalition of organizations has banded together to urge Senate leaders to protect credit card consumers as part of the bailout package. As an examination of the existing laws reveals, there is little or no control or oversight of credit card issuers. To date, the credit card companies have successfully avoided any detrimental federal legislation. Instead, credit card companies were the biggest beneficiaries of …

Study On Safety And Liability Issues Relating To Package Travel, Frank Alleweldt, Klaus Tonner, Marc Mcdonald

Articles

This study on safety and liability issues relating to package travel, package holidays and package tours highlights some of the gaps in the EU package travel law by answering a number of specific questions related to statistical evidence, Community legislation, and US legislation. It also suggests possible solutions to fill these gaps. The study was prepared by Civic Consulting and is based on a legal analysis, a literature review, an evaluation of statistical data, and on interviews with European and national travel and tour operator associations, individual tour operators, European and national associations of insurers, individual insurance companies, and European …

Some Peer-To-Peer, Democratically And Voluntarily Produced Thoughts About 'The Wealth Of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets And Freedom,' By Yochai Benkler, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

In this review essay, Bartow concludes that The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler is a book well worth reading, but that Benkler still has a bit more work to do before his Grand Unifying Theory of Life, The Internet, and Everything is satisfactorily complete. It isn't enough to concede that the Internet won't benefit everyone. He needs to more thoroughly consider the ways in which the lives of poor people actually worsen when previously accessible information, goods and services are rendered less convenient or completely unattainable by their migration online. Additionally, the …

The (Boundedly) Rational Basis Of Trademark Liability, Jeremy N. Sheff

Faculty Publications

This article argues that trademark infringement and dilution are best understood as commercial behavior that manipulates the cognitive biases of consumers, and as such threatens to render their heuristic judgments persistently inaccurate. In this view, trademark liability—whether imposed under the label of infringement or dilution—serves neither to protect property rights of trademark owners, nor to protect them against the unfair trade practices of competitors, but to shape consumer markets in such a way as to conform to the innate cognitive processes of boundedly rational consumers. The trademark regime can thus be understood as a legal apparatus designed (albeit perhaps unconsciously) …

False Advertising, Animals, And Ethical Consumption, Carter Dillard

Animal Law Review

In light of the fact that today’s consumers often want their products to be created in the most environmentally-, globally-, and animal-friendly ways possible, unethical sellers sometimes succumb to the incentive to persuade consumers that goods were created more ethically than they actually were. This article investigates the ways that consumers can protect themselves from false advertising through the use of federal and state agencies, independant review, federal and state courts, and private attorneys general actions.