Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

Who’S Afraid Of Uber?, Jeremy Kidd

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Consumer Psychology And The Problem Of Fine Print Fraud, Roseanna Sommers, Meirav Furth-Matzkin

Articles

This Article investigates consumers' beliefs about contracts that are formed as a result of fraud. Across four studies, we asked lay survey respondents to judge scenarios in which sellers use false representations to induce consumers to buy products or services. In each case, the false representations are directly contradicted by the written terms of the contract, which the consumers sign without reading. Our findings reveal that lay respondents, unlike legally trained respondents, believe that such agreements are consented to and will be enforced as written, despite the seller's material deception. Importantly, fine print discourages consumers from wanting to take legal …

Non-Transparent Pbm Cash Flows: Balancing Market Forces Under A Reluctant Legislative Regime, John Mcguinness

William & Mary Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

Countering Misinformation In The Health Care System: The Case For Stricter Regulations Within Health Insurance Provider Directories, Jaclyn Kleban

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Specific Consumer Expectations Test For Product Defects, Clayton J. Masterman, W. Kip Viscusi

Journal Articles

In this Article, we propose that courts adopt an amended version of the consumer expectations test that we call the “specific consumer expectations test.” The specific consumer expectations test would apply to any product or product component for which consumers have clear, articulable ex ante expectations about the function of the product. Under the specific consumer expectations test, a defendant is liable if consumers expected such a product to reduce a particular risk, and the product in fact increased that risk. Similarly, if a product was intended to convey a particular benefit, but in fact harmed consumers along the same …

Placebo Marks, Jake Linford

Pepperdine Law Review

Scholars often complain that sellers use trademarks to manipulate consumer perception. This manipulation ostensibly harms consumers by limiting their ability to make informed choices. For example, holding other things constant, consumers spend more money on goods with a high-performance reputation. Critics characterize that result as wasteful, if not anticompetitive. But recent marketing research shows that trademarks with a high-performance reputation may sometimes influence perception to the benefit of the consumer. A trademark with a high-performance reputation can deliver a performance-enhancing placebo effect. Research subjects perform better at physical and mental tasks when they prepare or play with a product bearing …

An Essay On The Quieting Of Products Liability Law, Aaron Twerski

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Bringing Relevance Back To Consumer Bankruptcy, Nathalie Martin

Faculty Scholarship

The Seventeenth Annual Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal Symposium

This Paper presumes that readers want to make bankruptcy more useful for consumers and for society as a whole. If this is true, we need to ask two questions: first, what do individual consumers hope to get out of the system, and second, what does society hope to get out of the system?

Part I of this Paper discusses the increase in debt over the last two decades, the growing wage and income gap, growing debt inequality and race, and the fall of the CFPB, all justifications for using the bankruptcy system …

California's Consumer Privacy Act Faces Possible Revision As Enforcement Deadline Looms, Rebecca Garcia

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Where's The Consumer Harm? The Bots Act: A Fruitless Boogeyman Hunt, Zachary Sturman

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Historically, the secondary-ticket market for sporting events, concerts, and the like entailed hollering scalpers perched outside of venues. Though this practice has not been entirely extinguished, the internet has largely moved the secondary-ticket market online to websites like StubHub, the largest player in this arena. Instead of yelling loudest or finding the best real estate outside a stadium from which to perch, the modern ticket scalper competes most effectively in the secondary-ticket market by finding ways to access primary tickets online. By using ticket "bots," programs designed to autofill customer information and solve CAPTCHA prompts, modern scalpers can quickly purchase …

The Arc Of Class Actions: A View From The Trenches, Donald R. Frederico

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

There Ought To Be A Law: What Corporate Social Responsibility Can Teach Us About Consumer Contract Formation, Colin P. Marks

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ali's Restatement Of The Law Of Consumer Contracts: Perpetuating A Legal Fiction?, Dee Pridgen

Loyola Consumer Law Review

The American Law Institute's proposed Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts has undergone a lengthy process of drafts and discussions, but the road to completion has been rocky. Indeed, only one of nine proposed sections have thus far been adopted by the ALI membership, despite years of work on the project. Much of the criticism centered on the proposal's definition of consumer assent to (or adoption of) standard contract terms, which as currently drafted states that consumers are bound by contract terms of which they have had notice and an opportunity to review, and have manifested assent in some …

How To Make A Dead Armadillo: Consumer Contracts And The Perils Of Compromise, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Loyola Consumer Law Review

The ALI's proposed Restatement of the Law, Consumer Contracts ("RLCC") has managed to alarm both corporate America and consumer advocates, including half the nation's attorneys general. To some extent, the RLCC is yet another victim of the nation's increasing polarization and the rise of partisanship within the legal profession. But the RLCC suffers from self-inflicted wounds through questionable endorsement of problematic case law on contract formation as well as its goal of a well-intentioned but flawed "Grand Bargain" that arguably seized a middle ground disliked, for different reasons, by both consumer and business advocates. The RL CC stepped into this …

Cfpb Seeks To Further Strategy To Prevent Consumer Harm, Rebecca Garcia

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reds, Whites, And Sulfites: Examining Different Organic Wine Regulation Practices In The United States And The European Union, Ryan Puszka

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Abstract:

This note examines the history of regulation within the organic wine industry in the U.S. and the E.U. and explores the motivations behind the production of organic wine in these two regions. The variance in the historical significance of wine between these two regions is reflected in the contemporary differences between the two regions’ rules for organic wine certification. In 2012, the U.S. and the E.U. entered into a comprehensive organic equivalency agreement that covered nearly all organic agricultural products but due to significant differences in the two regions’ regulatory schemes concerning the inclusion of added sulfites in wine, …

Sandbox Boundaries, Hilary J. Allen

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Around the world, subnational and national regulatory sandboxes are being adopted in an effort to promote fintech innovation. These regulatory sandboxes seek to achieve this by rolling back some of the consumer protection and prudential regulations that would otherwise apply to the firms trialing their financial products and services in the sandbox. While sacrificing such protections in order to promote innovation is problematic, such sacrifice may nonetheless be justifiable if, by working with innovators in the sandbox, regulators are educated about new technologies in a way that enhances their ability to effectively promote consumer protection and financial stability in other …

Disabling Fascism: A Struggle For The Last Laugh In Trump’S America, Madeleine M. Plasencia

Articles

Six years before the start of the Second World War and seven months after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany, the German government instituted the “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases.” The moral depravity that started as a sterilization program targeting “useless eaters” and lives “unworthy of life” degenerated into a “euthanasia” program that murdered at least 250,000 people with mental and physical dis/abilities as an “open secret” until 1941, when the Bishop of Munster, Clemens August Count von Galen, delivered a sermon protesting the killing of “unproductive people.”2 Although the Trump Administration has not yet driven …

Unfair-But-Not-Deceptive: Confronting The Ambiguity In Washington State’S Consumer Protection Act, Emily Beale

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment will argue that Washington state courts must promulgate a new, workable definition of “unfair-but-not-deceptive” under Washington’s Consumer Protection Act. Washington courts have acknowledged that a business act or practice can be unfair but not deceptive, but a simple recognition does not fulfill the liberal intentions of the Consumer Protection Act. By continuously declining to define unfair- but-not-deceptive, Washington courts have left consumers vulnerable and without recourse. This Comment will highlight the approaches developed by the federal government and other state governments on how to confront the ambiguity of unfair-but-not-deceptive and will propose a concrete definition for the term.