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Consumer Protection
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May 22, 2024
Justices' CFPB Alliance May Save SEC Courts, Not Chevron
A four-justice concurrence to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision upholding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's unique funding scheme last week carries implications for other cases pending before the court that challenge the so-called administrative state, or the permanent cadre of regulatory agencies and career government enforcers who hold sway over vast swaths of American economic life.
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May 22, 2024
1st Circ. Affirms UBS Win In Puerto Rico Pension Fight
The First Circuit said public pensioners in Puerto Rico can't advance their claims that UBS Financial Services illegally underwrote $3 billion in bonds, ruling that the island's financial restructuring plan transferred the right to those claims to a special committee.
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May 22, 2024
Wells Fargo Tries 2 Tactics To Get Overdraft Fee Suit Bounced
Wells Fargo is arguing to a South Dakota federal judge that customers suing as a potential class fully knew they were subject to penalties when they bounced checks, and that an arbitration clause obligates them to handle disputes outside court.
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May 22, 2024
Accepting Price-Fix Tech Invite Can Be Enough: DOJ Official
An advisor to the Justice Department's top competition official continued to argue Wednesday that signing onto a price setting algorithm can be enough to trigger antitrust liability if the program was billed as fixing prices.
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May 22, 2024
FCC Weighs Requiring AI Disclosures In Political Ads
The Federal Communications Commission will soon decide if it needs new rules requiring disclosure of content generated with artificial intelligence in radio and TV political ads.
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May 22, 2024
Evidence Shaky In First Zantac Cancer Trial, Drugmakers Say
Attorneys for GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim told a Chicago jury Wednesday that no one besides a plaintiff's paid witnesses have said publicly that Zantac heartburn medication causes colon cancer, calling on the jurors to reject claims that the companies owe $640 million for a woman's cancer diagnosis.
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May 22, 2024
Daughter Sues Over Oil Co. Family's 'Looting Campaign'
Two relatives of Westmore Fuel Co. Inc.'s late co-founder are plundering the company to edge out his successors, the daughter of a co-founder claims in a Connecticut state court complaint aiming to dissolve the firm.
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May 22, 2024
DuPont 'Document Dump' Rattles NC In PFAS Suit
North Carolina and DuPont on Wednesday battled over what the state called a roughly 5 million-page "document dump" ahead of a looming June 3 discovery deadline in its contamination lawsuit, irking a business court judge in the process.
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May 22, 2024
Uvalde Families Ink $2M Deal With City Over School Shooting
The families of 19 victims of the deadly May 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School announced Wednesday that they've reached a presuit settlement with the city of Uvalde, Texas, that includes $2 million in payments to the families and commitments to better train police officers in their shooting responses.
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May 22, 2024
WeChat Users Must Arbitrate Privacy Row, Calif. Panel Says
California appellate justices said Monday that WeChat users must arbitrate their proposed class action accusing Tencent of using politically motivated practices to censor their communications, saying plaintiffs can't argue they never agreed to terms of service with the arbitration provision while also basing their complaint on those same terms of service.
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May 22, 2024
Major County Sheriffs Seek FCC's OK For Axon Cameras
Sheriffs from the largest U.S. counties called on the Federal Communications Commission to waive technical rules to allow law enforcement to use three new Axon camera devices.
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May 22, 2024
SC Gov. Signs Earned Wage Access Bill Into Law
South Carolina has become the fifth state to approve a new law governing so-called earned wage access products, which provide workers with cash advances, as the Palmetto State joins Nevada, Missouri, Wisconsin and Kansas in regulating the products.
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May 22, 2024
Rakoff Punts Terraform Args Amid Big-Dollar Settlement Talk
A hearing on whether Terraform Labs and its creator Do Kwon must pay billions of dollars in penalties after being found liable for fraud by a Manhattan jury was delayed Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff, who said the sides are actively pursuing a settlement.
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May 22, 2024
Lead Blood Test Maker To Plead Guilty, Pay $42M Over Defects
Medical device maker Magellan Diagnostics has agreed to pay at least $42 million and plead guilty to hiding a defect in its blood testing devices for lead that caused inaccurately low results for tens of thousands of children and others, Massachusetts federal prosecutors said.
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May 22, 2024
Mich. Judge Gives Final OK To Engineering Co. $8M Flint Deal
A Michigan federal judge has granted final approval of an $8 million settlement between a civil engineering company and Flint, Michigan, residents, putting to rest claims the company failed to warn them of likely lead contamination that triggered a drinking water crisis in the city.
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May 22, 2024
CFPB Says Some Credit Card Standards Apply To BNPL Firms
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wednesday that shoppers using buy-now, pay-later products are covered by some of the same federal safeguards as those that apply to traditional credit cards, issuing the agency's first-ever guidance directed at this fintech-heavy field of financing.
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May 21, 2024
Hawaii Wins $916M From Bristol-Myers, Sanofi Over Plavix
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Sanofi owe more than $916 million to the state of Hawaii for not warning patients of East Asian or Pacific Island ancestry of potential health risks associated with their blood thinner Plavix, a state judge ruled Tuesday, following a trip to the state's highest court.
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May 21, 2024
Minn. Poised To Join State Data Privacy Law Patchwork
Minnesota is on the brink of becoming the latest state to enact comprehensive data privacy legislation, after the legislature sent to the governor's desk a measure that would give consumers more control over how companies use their personal information, including for profiling purposes, and require businesses to appoint a lead privacy official.
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May 21, 2024
Pacific Seafood Beats Crab Price-Fixing Claims, For Now
A California federal magistrate judge on Tuesday dismissed a proposed class action claiming Pacific Seafood fixed the price paid to fishers for Dungeness crab in the Pacific Northwest but will allow the fisherman who filed the suit the opportunity to amend most of his claims.
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May 21, 2024
Bungie's Code Copying Claims Questioned At Seattle Trial
A top product security engineer at Bungie told a Seattle federal jury on Tuesday that a hacker accused of exploiting a popular game to make cheat software likely never had access to the game's source code and acknowledged the game company hasn't seen the cheat code that it claims amounts to copyright infringement.
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May 21, 2024
Realtors Want Rethink After DOJ Antitrust Probe Allowed
The National Association of Realtors has asked the D.C. Circuit for a rehearing after the appeals court found the U.S. Department of Justice can reopen an antitrust investigation into the trade group despite an earlier agency settlement over the association's rules.
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May 21, 2024
Full 5th Circ. Urged To Rethink Blocking Student Loan Rule
The U.S. Department of Education has asked the full Fifth Circuit to reconsider a recent preliminary injunction a three-judge panel ordered blocking changes to a program providing student loan forgiveness to borrowers defrauded by higher education institutions. It said the panel wrongly held that the department doesn't have the authority to determine whether a borrower has a valid defense to repayment.
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May 21, 2024
Banks Urged To Vote Out Exxon Leaders Who Sued Investors
A group of state and city financial officials sent letters to some of the biggest banks and asset managers Tuesday urging them to vote against Exxon Mobil Corp.'s CEO and lead independent director at an upcoming annual meeting because of the company's lawsuit against a pair of environmentally minded activist investors.
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May 21, 2024
Molson Coors' Mimosas More Water Than Wine, Suit Says
Two consumers hit Molson Coors Beverage Co. with a proposed class action Monday in Missouri federal court, alleging that the company's mimosa drinks are misbranded because they are not made with sparkling wine but rather made with sparkling water and sugar and contain only small amounts of orange juice.
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May 21, 2024
NTIA Explores Gov't Support For 6G Development
The U.S. Department of Commerce is looking for input on how the government can aid in the development of 6G technology.
Expert Analysis
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Examining The Arbitration Clause Landscape Amid Risks
Amid a new wave of mass arbitrations, recent developments in the courts and from the American Arbitration Association suggest that companies should improve arbitration clause drafting to protect themselves against big-ticket settlements and avoid major potential liability, say attorneys at Benesch.
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Takeaways From The 2023 DOJ Fraud Section Report
Attorneys at Wiley discuss notable trends from the U.S. Department of Justice's recently reported Fraud Section activity last year and highlight areas of enforcement to watch for in the future, including healthcare fraud and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations.
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2nd Circ. Baby Food Ruling Disregards FDA's Expertise
The Second Circuit's recent decision in White v. Beech-Nut Nutrition, refusing to defer litigation over heavy metals in baby food until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration weighs in on the issue, provides no indication that courts will resolve the issue with greater efficiency than the FDA, say attorneys at Phillips Lytle.
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Conn. Loan Law Tweaks May Have 3 Major Effects On Lenders
Recently proposed minor amendments to Connecticut’s consumer protection laws could nonetheless mean major and unexpected changes to state consumer financial services regulations that dictate how lenders and their customer-facing service providers handle fee payments, mortgage servicer licensing and private student loans, says Jonathan Joshua at Joshua Law Firm.
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Past CCPA Enforcement Sets Path For Compliance Efforts
The California Privacy Protection Agency and the California Attorney General's Office haven't skipped a beat in investigating potential noncompliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act, and six broad issues will continue to dominate the enforcement landscape and inform compliance strategy, say attorneys at Reed Smith.
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7 Takeaways From CFPB Circular On Digital Comparison Tools
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new guidance regarding digital comparison-shopping platforms for financial services products and services offers fresh insights into the bureau's interpretation of the abusiveness standard and expands on principles underlying its previous guidance on the topic, say attorneys at Husch Blackwell.
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Securing A Common Understanding Of Language Used At Trial
Witness examinations in the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump illustrate the importance of building a common understanding of words and phrases and examples as a fact-finding tool at trial, says Reuben Guttman at Guttman Buschner.
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How Policymakers Can Preserve The Promise Of Global Trade
Global trade faces increasing challenges but could experience a resurgence if long-held approaches adjust and the U.S. accounts for factors that undermine free trade's continuing viability, such as regional trading blocs and the increasing speed of technological advancement, says David Jividen at White & Case.
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Opinion
Proposed MDL Management Rule Needs Refining
Proponents of the recently proposed Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16.1 believe it may enhance efficiency in multidistrict litigation proceedings if adopted, but there are serious concerns that it could actually hinder plaintiffs' access to justice through the courts — and there are fundamental flaws that deserve our attention, says Ashleigh Raso at Nigh Goldenberg.
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Meta Data Scraping Case Has Lessons For Platforms, AI Cos.
The California federal court ruling that artificial intelligence company Bright Data's scraping of public data from Meta social media sites does not constitute a breach of contract signals that platforms should review their terms of service and AI companies could face broad implications for their training of algorithms, say attorneys at Arnold & Porter.
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Opinion
Judicial Independence Is Imperative This Election Year
As the next election nears, the judges involved in the upcoming trials against former President Donald Trump increasingly face political pressures and threats of violence — revealing the urgent need to safeguard judicial independence and uphold the rule of law, says Benes Aldana at the National Judicial College.
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2nd Circ.'s Binance Locus Test Adds Risk For Blockchain Cos.
The Second Circuit’s recent use of the irrevocable liability test to rule a class action may proceed against decentralized crypto exchange Binance heightens the possibility that other blockchain-based businesses with domestic customers and digital infrastructure will find themselves subject to U.S. securities laws, say attorneys at Holland & Knight.
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Legal Issues When Training AI On Previously Collected Data
Following the Federal Trade Commission's recent guidance about the use of customer data to train artificial intelligence models, companies should carefully think through their terms of service and privacy policies and be cautious when changing them to permit new uses of previously collected data, says James Gatto at Sheppard Mullin.
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Protested CFPB Supervisory Order Reveals Process, Priorities
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s order announcing its first use of special oversight power to place installment lender World Acceptance Corp. under supervision despite resistance from the company provides valuable insight into which products and practices may draw bureau scrutiny, and illuminates important nuances of the risk assessment procedures, say Josh Kotin and Michelle Rogers at Cooley.
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Series
Riding My Peloton Bike Makes Me A Better Lawyer
Using the Peloton platform for cycling, running, rowing and more taught me that fostering a mind-body connection will not only benefit you physically and emotionally, but also inspire stamina, focus, discipline and empathy in your legal career, says Christopher Ward at Polsinelli.