Consumer Law & Policy Blog

NYTimes editorial on arbitration

Following up on its 3-part series on forced arbitration clauses, the New York Times published an editorial reiterating the conclusions of the series. The editorial concludes:

Reversing the broader trend of forced arbitration, however, will require public outcry loud and long enough to stir the White House and Congress to action. Many people interviewed in The Times’s series did not realize that their right to sue had been lost until they needed it. A common refrain was the disbelief that this could happen in America. But it is happening, and it needs to stop.

The full editorial is here.

Hosea Harvey Article on Disclosure Laws

Hosea H. Harvey of Temple has written Opening Schumer’s Box: The Empirical Foundations of Modern Consumer Finance Disclosure Law, 48 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform (2014). Here's the abstract:

This Article explores the fundamental failure of Congress’ twenty-five-year quest to utilize disclosure as the primary tool to both regulate credit card issuers and educate consumers. From inception until present, reforms to this disclosure regime, even when premised on judgment and decision-making behavioralism, were nomothetic in orientation and ignored clear differences in population behavior and the heterogeneity of consumers. Current law prohibits credit card issuers from acquiring consumer socio-demographic data and prevents issuers and regulators from using market and policy experimentation to enhance disclosure’s efficacy. To explain why this regime was structured this way and why it must change, this Article contains four key sections: (1) a comprehensive review of the creation of our modern consumer credit card regulatory scheme; (2) a survey of the empirical evidence used to update and expand that disclosure-centered regime over twenty-five years; (3) an account of why the existing scheme’s disclosure function substantially fails, not- withstanding recent reforms; and (4) an argument that to achieve optimal credit card disclosure efficacy, the law must permit issuers to acquire and utilize customer socio-demographic information, including race, gender, and other characteristics.

LA Times's David Lazarus: Using TiVo? Your personal choices may be going straight to advertisers

Here.  Here's the beginning of the story:

If you're a TiVo user, your digital video recorder may be ratting you out to advertisers.

In the latest example of consumer privacy being threatened by Big Data, TiVo's number-crunching subsidiary this week announced a partnership with media heavyweight Viacom that helps advertisers target TV viewers with specific commercials.

Think of it like this: A car company wants to reach men in their 20s. Viacom knows that younger guys like watching the spy cartoon "Archer" on Comedy Central. TiVo will now be able to say whether the commercial actually was seen by target viewers — and if any of them went on to buy the car.

"The Holy Grail of TV advertising has been to figure out who's watching and match it with their behavior," said James Dempsey, executive director of UC Berkeley's Center for Law & Technology. "This seems to do that."

Supreme Court will resolve yet another challenge to Obamacare

We've flagged before the issue of whether the Obamacare mandate that employers provide contraceptive coverage raises religious liberty problems even if an opt-out is available.

The Supreme Court announced today it will decide the issue in seven consolidated cases.

In a first, the FCC is fining a major cable company for getting hacked

The Post reports:

In the first such case against a U.S. cable company, federal regulators are slapping Cox Communications with a $595,000 fine after Cox allowed hackers from Lizard Squad to penetrate its systems and steal private customer information.

By posing as an IT administrator and tricking a couple of Cox employees into giving up their login credentials, a hacker known as "EvilJordie" broke into Cox's databases and gained access to customer names, addresses, password recovery information and even "partial" Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers, according to the Federal Communications Commission. They also got hold of some customers' telephone records.

Read the whole story here. (HT: Allison Zieve.)

Gallup: "Americans With Government Health Plans Most Satisfied"

As a new Gallup survey puts it:

Americans' satisfaction with the way the healthcare system works for them varies by the type of insurance they have. Satisfaction is highest among those with veterans or military health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and is lower among those with employer-paid and self-paid insurance. Americans with no health insurance are least satisfied of all.

This chart breaks it down:

Health uninsured rate hits all-time low

This report just issued by the Centers for Disease Control explains that the percentage of people in the U.S. without health insurance has hit an all-time low: 9 percent. That's down from 11.5 percent in 2014 and 14.4 percent in 2013. In terms of real people, that's 16,300,000 more people with health insurance than in 2013. 

InsideSources's Carter Dougherty: Warren Tries to Head Off Wall Street Gifts on Congressional Christmas Trees

Here.  Excerpt:

Since lawmakers passed a landmark overhaul of American financial regulation in 2010, congressional Democrats and the Obama administration have successfully fought changes to the law, known as Dodd-Frank. Among the proposed changes, Republicans have sought to restructure the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or ease the regulatory burden on mid-sized banks, which have struggled to differentiate themselves from Wall Street behemoths.

In those five years, Republicans have never had such clear opportunities to pass bills with provisions that President Barack Obama clearly doesn’t like — but that he might sign anyway, just for the sake of ending budgetary wrangles that have paralyzed Washington. That’s why groups that fought for Dodd-Frank are on high alert, trying to stop Democrats from defecting and keeping Republicans isolated.

“In spite of the importance of these reforms, and their broad popularity, some members of Congress are nonetheless attempting to use the appropriations process to roll them back, putting the public interest at risk to deliver a wish list to narrow Wall Street interests,” Americans for Financial Reform, an umbrella organization of labor unions, civil rights groups and consumer advocates, wrote lawmakers on Oct. 28.

DeGirolami on Spokeo Oral Argument

My colleague, Marc DeGirolami, read through the Spokeo oral argument transcript and had the following observations. I thought they might be of interest to readers of the blog.

 

* Justice Kagan emphasized to counsel for Spokeo that the reporting/dissemination of false information in credit reports is itself plausibly described as a harm. So that although Congress has to identify a concrete harm, that is such a harm. In response to counsel for Spokeo's claim that Robins needed to show some tangible consequence from the dissemination of false information (e.g., an employer's decision not to hire him), Justice Kagan said that such evidence was extremely difficult to come by.

 

*  Justice Sotomayor fairly plainly indicated that an "injury in fact" is any legally recognized right, a right that Congress can create. So that ought to be concrete enough.

 

* On the latter point, it seemed to me that Justice Kagan disagreed with Justice Sotomayor. Justice Kagan instead agreed with the following statement by Spokeo's counsel: "de facto injuries as to which there's no cause of action can be made actionable when Congress creates a cause of action. [But] [t]hat's quite different from saying that something that doesn't qualify under this Court's injury ­in ­fact standard as tangible harm can be made actionable." 

The future of cars, and car safety

Released last month, new Tesla software includes (the NYT reports)

a semiautonomous feature that allows hands-free, pedal-free driving on the highway under certain conditions. The car will even change lanes autonomously at the driver’s request (by hitting the turn signal) and uses sensors to scan the road in all directions and adjust the throttle, steering and brakes.

It is the first time that a production vehicle available to consumers will have such advanced self-driving capabilities. Or more to the point, the first time they will be unleashed for driving 70 miles per hour along twisty, though clearly marked, highways for long stretches. (Other manufacturers like Volvo and Mercedes-Benz recently introduced their own semiautonomous features, but limit the functions to lower speeds or require the driver to constantly touch the wheel.) And it’s perfectly legal. Among the states, only New York has any law prohibiting hands-free driving.

Check out the NYT's account of driving an autonomous vehicle.