Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

Fifty Years After The Consumer Credit Protection Act: The High Price Of Wage Garnishment, Faith Mullen

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Privacy's Law Of Design, Ari Ezra Waldman

Articles & Chapters

Privacy by design is about making privacy part of the conception and development of new data collection tools. But how should we interpret “privacy by design” as a legal mandate? As it transitions from an academic buzzword into binding law, privacy by design will, for the first time, impose real responsibilities on real people to do specific things at specific times. And yet, there remains significant disagreement about what privacy by design actually means in practice: we have yet to define its who, what, when, why, and how. Different approaches to privacy by design have tried to answer those questions …

A New Deal For Debtors: Providing Procedural Justice In Consumer Bankruptcy, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Across the criminal and civil justice systems, research regarding procedural justice — feeling that one has a voice, is respected, and is before a neutral and even-handed adjudicator — shows that people’s positive perceptions of legal processes are fundamental to the legal system’s effectiveness and to the rule of law. About a million people file bankruptcy every year, making the consumer bankruptcy system the part of the federal court system with which people most often come into contact. Given the importance of bankruptcy to American families and the credit economy, there should exist a rich literature theorizing and investigating how …

Antitrust And Consumer Protection, Leslie Sara Hyman, Matthew J. Mcgowan

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Boilerplate And Party Intent, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is commonly recognized that parties often do not read or understand contract boilerplate they agree to, and that such parties might not intend all the terms in it. Less often noticed are decisions that favor boilerplate over evidence of the parties’ contrary intent for the very reason that it is boilerplate. This article discusses that phenomenon. It identifies decisions in which courts favor boilerplate terms over other evidence the parties’ intent because it is boilerplate, discusses the rules that explain those outcomes, and examines the reasons behind the rules.

A contractual writing, whether individually negotiated and drafted or boilerplate, …

The Internet Of Torts: Expanding Civil Liability Standards To Address Corporate Remote Interference, Rebecca Crootof

Law Faculty Publications

Thanks to the proliferation of internet-connected devices that constitute the “Internet of Things” (“IoT”), companies can now remotely and automatically alter or deactivate household items. In addition to empowering industry at the expense of individuals, this remote interference can cause property damage and bodily injury when an otherwise operational car, alarm system, or implanted medical device abruptly ceases to function.

Even as the potential for harm escalates, contract and tort law work in tandem to shield IoT companies from liability. Exculpatory clauses limit civil remedies, IoT devices’ bundled object/service nature thwarts implied warranty claims, and contractual notice of remote interference …

Contract Creep, Tal Kastner, Ethan J. Leib

Scholarly Works

Scholars and judges think they can address the multiple purposes and values of contract law by developing different doctrinal regimes for different transaction types. They think if we develop one track of contract doctrine for sophisticated parties and another for consumers, we can build a better world of contract: protecting private ordering for sophisticated parties and protecting consumers’ needs all at once. Given the growing enthusiasm for laying down these separate tracks and developing their infrastructures, this Article brings a necessary reality check to this endeavor by highlighting for scholars and judges how doctrine in contract law functions in fact: …

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Of Online Reviews: The Trouble With Trolls And A Role For Contract Law After The Consumer Review Fairness Act, Wayne R. Barnes

Georgia Law Review

The advent of the internet has brought innumerable
innovations to our lives. Among the innovations is the
meteoric rise in the volume of e-commerce conducted on
the internet. Correspondingly, consumer-posted
information about merchants, goods, and services has
also become a rich source of information for consumers
researching a purchase online. This information takes
many forms, but a major category is the narrative review
describing the purchase and experience. Such reviews
are posted on websites such as Yelp, Amazon, and
TripAdvisor, on apps, and on social media such as
Facebook and Twitter. The amount and volume of
reviews has exploded in …

Fixing Ever-Ready: Repairing And Standardizing The Traditional Survey Measure Of Consumer Confusion, Eric D. Derosia

Georgia Law Review

In trademark infringement litigation, courts often rely
on consumer surveys that use the “Ever-Ready” method
to measure consumer confusion. Courts are
understandably careful to scrutinize consumer surveys
for ways in which their methodology might have biased
their results toward the outcome desired by their
proponents. This Article strengthens and improves such
examinations by empirically testing and improving the
Ever-Ready method itself.
The findings of four new empirical studies reported in
this Article indicate the faith placed by the courts in the
Ever-Ready method is somewhat misplaced. Seemingly
subtle variations in the wording of the Ever-Ready
questions have a consistent and …

Amazon’S Invincibility: The Effect Of Defective Third-Party Vendors’ Products On Amazon, Amy E. Shehan

Georgia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Consumer Remedies For Civil Rights, Kate Sablosky Elengold

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Data Disparity: Tiered Pricing As An Alternative To Consumer Iot Data Privacy Regulations, Matthew Lostocco

Honors Theses and Capstones

In recent years, Internet of Things (IoT) devices have exploded on the consumer scene. These emerging products bring new technological capabilities into our everyday lives. IoT is projected to contribute anywhere from $4-11 trillion to the global economy and companies are investing billions of dollars into the technology. However, with the vast amount of data that IoT devices collect, consumers are burdening the risk of having their personal data breached or sold to third parties. This paper first identifies why consumers may be weary or willing towards providing their personal data and how unconscious biases in the purchasing process cause …

Identities In Critical Condition: The Urgent Need To Reevaluate The Investigation And Resolution Of Claims Of Medical Identity Theft, Stephanie Lindgren

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments Concerning The Purchase Of Consumer Debt; Defining Potential Problems And Proposals For Suggested Solutions, Gerald A. Williams

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

No abstract provided.

Platform Advocacy And The Threat To Deliberative Democracy, Abbey Stemler

Maryland Law Review

Businesses have long tried to influence political outcomes, but today, there is a new and potent form of corporate political power—Platform Advocacy. Internet-based platforms, such as Facebook, Google, and Uber, mobilize their user bases through direct solicitation of support and the more troubling exploitation of irrational behavior. Platform Advocacy helps platforms push policy agendas that create favorable legal environments for themselves, thereby strengthening their own dominance in the marketplace. This new form of advocacy will have radical effects on deliberative democracy.

In the age of constant digital noise and uncertainty, it is more important than ever to detect and analyze …

“I’Ll Know It When I See It”: Defending The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’S Approach Of Interpreting The Scope Of Unfair, Deceptive, Or Abusive Acts Or Practices (“Udapp”) Through Enforcement Actions, Stephen J. Canzona

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

A Fair Use To Remember: Restoring Application Of The Fair Use Doctrine To Strengthen Copyright Law And Disarm Abusive Copyright Litigation, Lauren Gorab

Fordham Law Review

The primary goal of copyright law is to benefit the public. By rewarding authors with exclusive rights, such as the power to enforce copyright infringement, copyright protection is the means through which copyright law accomplishes this goal. Another way that copyright law pursues its goal is through the fair use doctrine—an invaluable utilitarian limit on copyright protection. However, fair use is, among other things, vague. The current application of fair use as an affirmative defense magnifies the doctrine’s problems and makes copyright law hospitable to abusive copyright litigation. Current proposals in this area of reform target either fair use or …

Revising The Vertical Merger Guidelines (Ftc Hearings), Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This slide deck was the author’s presentation at the FTC Hearings on Vertical Mergers (November 1, 2018). The deck sets out a summary of the author’s economic analysis and proposed revisions to the U.S. Vertical Merger Guidelines.

The Fatal Failure Of The Regulatory State, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The impact of government policies depends on their design, implementation, and enforcement.! The administrative law literature focuses primarily on matters of regulatory structure.2 Government agencies entrusted with protection of the environment and promotion of health and safety foster these objectives by designing and promulgating regulations that are sometimes quite stringent.' Whether these regulations will in fact generate their intended effects depends on whether they create sufficient economic incentives to discourage risky behavior...

The Article begins by documenting the low values currently placed on life in regulatory enforcement efforts. Part I presents examples involving job safety, food safety, motor-vehicle safety, and …

What's The Big Hurry? The Urgency Of Data Breach Notification, Ellen Cornelius

Homeland Security Publications

No abstract provided.