Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

Regulation "Best Interest's" Reduction Of Consumer Access To Investment Advice, Justin Deffenbacher

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Failures Of Electric Utility Regulation In Illinois And The Case For Public Ownership, Jackson Paller

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reconceptualizing Behaviorally Informed Consumer Law And Policy, Martin Brenncke

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Is Consumer Protection For?, Luke Herrine

Loyola Consumer Law Review

When law and economics barreled its way into consumer protection scholarship two score years ago, it brought with it the consumer sovereignty framework: an approach to analysis in which actual markets are compared to an ideal market in which consumers optimize exogenous welfare functions by choosing between optimally competitive sellers. Even after two decades of behavioralist critique and even with increasingly critical perspectives taking root since the Global Financial Crisis, this consumer sovereignty ideal continues to serve as both a descriptive and normative baseline for consumer protection scholarship. This Article argues that it is time to reconsider the consumer sovereignty …

The Tiktok Union: Unionization In The Age Of New Media, Sara Shiffman

Loyola Consumer Law Review

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA) is the cornerstone of employee's right to organize, collectively bargain and take collective action. As the act has been reviewed by the Supreme Court as well as the National Labor Relations Board, it has been seen as somewhat flexible, particularly when it comes to technology and how it can be used to for employee organization and communication. But as the labor market has shifted to a more technology based work-for-hire model, are those who choose to take part in new media, specifically influencer marketing technically employees entitled to the same rights and …

Table Of Contents, Loyola Consumer Law Review

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deficiencies In The Disclosures Of Privacy Policies And In User Choice, Scott Jordan, Siddharth Narasimhan, Jina Hong

Loyola Consumer Law Review

Development of a comprehensive legal privacy framework in the United States should be based on identification of the common deficiencies of privacy policies. We attempt to delineate deficiencies by critically analyzing the privacy policies of mobile apps, application suites, social networks, Internet Service Providers, and Internet-of- Things devices. Whereas many studies have examined readability of privacy policies, few have specifically identified the information that should be provided in privacy policies but is not.

Privacy legislation invariably starts a definition of personally identifiable information. We find that privacy policies' definitions of personally identifiable information are far too restrictive, excluding information that …

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 …

Misleading Ai: Regulatory Strategies For Algorithmic Transparency In Technologies Augmenting Consumer Decision-Making, Jeannie Marie Paterson

Loyola Consumer Law Review

Increasingly, consumers' decisions about what to buy are mediated through digital tools promoted as using "AI", "data" or "algorithms" to assist consumers in making decisions. These kinds of digital information intermediaries include such diverse technologies as recommender systems, comparison sites, virtual voice assistants, and chatbots. They are promoted as effective and efficient ways of assisting consumers making decisions in the face of otherwise insurmountable volumes of information. But such tools also hold the potential to mislead consumers, amongst other possible harms, including about their capacity, efficacy, and identity. Most consumer protection regimes contain broad and flexible prohibitions on misleading conduct …

Misplaced Trust, Failure Of Contract, And The Need To Create Robust Options For Consumers, Anjanette H. Raymond, Inna Kouper

Loyola Consumer Law Review

Platform and application 'marketplaces' (app stores) serve an important function for the consumer. The 'marketplace' serves a single point of choice for applications that will be downloaded, and used, on either the apple or android cell phone. Over time, consumers have been reliant- almost dependent on these marketplaces. One can easily imagine, consumers trust the host, they trust the marketplace, they trust the ongoing updates and other technology 'fixes' when their applications begin to fail- one is undoubtedly aware of the loyalty that exists to these brands and marketplace hosts. Exercising full control, app stores engender extreme loyalty and high …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Skating Past Liability Under The Tcpa: Robocalls And Unsolicited Texts And E-Mails, Julissa R. Rachor

Seattle University Law Review

This Note argues that the applicability of Telephone Consumer Protection Act's (TCPA) autodialer provision should be interpreted broadly to include calls made on many types of dialing equipment.

Part I of this Note offers a brief history of the TCPA and autodialers. Part II examines the FCC’s Orders that interpret the TCPA’s autodialer provision, and Part III assesses the varying interpretations of the provision by the circuit courts. Part IV reviews the general facts and procedural history of Duguid, and the Court’s interpretation of the autodialers provision. Last, Part V examines current efforts offered by Congress and potential next …

Fit For Its Ordinary Purpose: Implied Warranties And Common Law Duties For Consumer Finance Contracts, Edward J. Janger, Susan Block-Lieb

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Illusory Privacy, Thomas Haley

Indiana Law Journal

For decades, regulators, consumer advocates, and privacy theorists have grappled with one of privacy’s most important questions: how to protect private information that consumers unwittingly give away with the click of an “I accept” button. Reform efforts remain mired in a morass of text, focusing on the increasing volume and complexity of firms’ terms of service and privacy policies. This Article moves beyond such existing approaches. By analyzing terms of service and privacy policies from hundreds of top websites—which this Article calls “platform terms”—this Article demonstrates that the prevailing “notice and consent” paradigm of privacy regulation cannot provide meaningful protection. …

Cannabis Derivatives And Trademark Registration: The Case Of Delta-8-Thc, W. Michael Schuster

Indiana Law Journal

The legal environment surrounding the cannabis industry is ambiguous and constantly changing. While cannabis is prohibited under federal law, a 2018 statute legalized a variant of the cannabis plant (“hemp”) that is low in its most common intoxicating agents. Recognizing this, entrepreneurs began to process hemp to extract and sell chemicals contained therein. Included in this trend is the extraction of Delta-8 Tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ8-THC)—a psychoactive drug with an increasing market presence in states where most cannabis (e.g., “marijuana”) is illegal.

As competition in the Δ8-THC field emerged, firms sought to distinguish their wares through brand recognition and federal trademark registration. …

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 …

The Rules Of Professional Responsibility And Legal Finance: A Status Update, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

Legal finance occurs when strangers fund litigation for profit. Traditionally looked upon with suspicion in the common law, and limited by the doctrines of champerty and maintenance, legal finance is now a thriving part of the American legal landscape. Legal finance has been promoted as a solution to the access-to-justice problems facing working and middle class Americans, as well as a new asset class for Wall Street. At the center of legal finance, however, are lawyers – not the lawyers who write the contracts for the financing – but the lawyers for the cases being financed.
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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. …

The Multi-Level Marketing Pandemic, Christopher G. Bradley, Hannah E. Oates

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Among the societal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a sharp rise in the activities of multi-level marketing companies (MLMs). MLMs are business enterprises in which participants seek not only to sell products to friends, family, and social media contacts, but also to recruit them as MLM participants, with the promise of "building their own business from home."

False promises often pervade MLM sales pitches. Evidence shows that few participants see even a dollar of profit from their MLM work; the vast majority of recruits quickly abandon their MLM dreams and lose their investments. Yet the pitch has become …

Returning To The Statutory Text: Why The Language Of Section 13(B) Requires Courts To Narrowly Construe The Ftc’S Ability To Obtain Injunctive Relief, Christopher Halm

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces over 70 laws in the areas of antitrust and consumer protection, and one valuable tool to support their enforcement is Section 13(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act (“Section 13(b)”). Section 13(b), among other features, grants the FTC authority to seek an injunction in district court against any defendant that is “about to violate” one or more of those laws. For the past three decades, courts have adopted a permissive judicial interpretation of that language, authorizing injunctions against defendants when the allegedly impending violations were only “likely to recur” based on past misconduct. This …