Consumer Protection

  • October 23, 2025

    DC Judge Won't Let Meta Claw Back Discovery Docs

    A D.C. Superior Court judge on Thursday said that attorneys for Meta told researchers to modify their research into its platform's effects on teens' mental health to curtail liability, finding that the crime-fraud exception to communications between attorney and client applies.

  • October 23, 2025

    OpenAI Reduced Suicide Safety Before Teen Died, Parents Say

    OpenAI decided to remove some longstanding suicide prevention protocols and cut short its safety testing in the months before a California teenager died by suicide, according to an updated version of the wrongful death suit filed by the teen's parents in San Francisco County Superior Court.

  • October 23, 2025

    Wash. Justices Skeptical Of Debtor's Collection Notice Stance

    Washington Supreme Court justices appeared wary Thursday of second-guessing a Seattle federal judge who asked them to decide whether a hospital billing disclosure law applies to debt collectors, as the plaintiff in the underlying proposed class action pressed the court to "reformulate" the certified question.  

  • October 23, 2025

    Retailer To Pay $4.8M To End AGs' Membership Fee Claims

    An online retailer has reached a $4.8 million deal ending a multistate consumer protection probe asserting the company deceptively enrolled customers in paid membership programs, charged them high monthly fees, then tried to keep them from canceling their memberships.

  • October 23, 2025

    NY AG Sues Vape Shop Owners For Selling To Kids

    New York's attorney general is looking to permanently shut down two smoke shops and ban their owners from ever working in the vape industry again, claiming they flagrantly sold illegal flavored vapes to customers including children, according to a petition filed on Thursday.

  • October 23, 2025

    Ex-Amazon Coder Says She's Turned Life Around Since Hack

    A former Amazon.com Inc. coder who exposed the personal data of nearly 100 million people should be sent to prison, the U.S. government said in a new Seattle federal court filing that seeks a seven-year sentence for her.

  • October 23, 2025

    Boeing Asks Justices To Ax Texas Court Ruling In Union Suit

    The U.S. Supreme Court should review the Texas Supreme Court's decision to let a Southwest pilots union sue Boeing after a pair of plane crashes in the late 2010s, Boeing argued, claiming Texas' high court erred by not deeming the lawsuit preempted by the Railway Labor Act.

  • October 23, 2025

    Debt Co. Owner Says CFPB Erred With $5.8M Restitution Bid

    A U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau bid for $5.8 million in restitution against a manager of a now-shuttered debt relief company should be denied because it does not take into account refunds that customers have already received, a California federal judge has been told.

  • October 23, 2025

    Split DC Circ. Won't Lift Block On FTC's Media Matters Probe

    A divided D.C. Circuit panel refused Thursday to let the Federal Trade Commission subpoena Media Matters for America while the agency appeals an order blocking that probe, crediting district courts' findings of "seemingly unusual and unprecedented" facts suggesting the investigation is retaliation for reporting about Nazi content on X.

  • October 23, 2025

    Google Rips $425M Privacy Verdict As Users Seek $2.4B More

    A class of some 98 million cellphone users who won a $425 million jury verdict finding that Google unlawfully collected their information asked a California federal judge to make the tech giant disgorge another $2.36 billion, while Google asked the court to dismantle the class and vacate the verdict.

  • October 23, 2025

    Truist Bank $4M Robocall Deal, $1.3M Fee Get Final OK

    A $4.1 million settlement between Truist Bank and a group of nearly 6,000 cellphone users who alleged the bank violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending them unwanted robocalls was granted final approval in North Carolina federal court Thursday.

  • October 23, 2025

    State Farm, Auto Shop End Customer Interference Row

    State Farm and a Tesla-approved auto repair shop asked a Maryland federal court Thursday to formally dismiss the repair shop's lawsuit accusing the insurer of defamation and interfering with its business by dissuading its insureds from using its services.

  • October 23, 2025

    NextGen Customers Seek Initial OK Of $19M Data Hack Deal

    A Georgia federal judge was asked Wednesday to grant preliminary approval of a settlement that would end a proposed class action against NextGen Healthcare over a 2023 data hack that allegedly affected more than 1 million people.

  • October 23, 2025

    Lending App EarnIn Users Must Arbitrate NC Class Claims

    Users of payday loan app EarnIn must arbitrate claims that the company's cash advance product violates North Carolina's consumer protection laws, a federal judge ruled, finding that the users clearly agreed to arbitration when they signed up for the app.

  • October 23, 2025

    Ga. Civil Engineering Co. Hit With Data Breach Class Action

    A Georgia civil engineering firm was hit with a proposed class action over a 2024 data breach, as a former employee sharply criticized the company for taking weeks to resolve the hack and over nine months to report it.

  • October 23, 2025

    Paychex Beats Privacy Suit Over 2024 Data Breach, For Now

    Paychex defeated, for now, a suit filed by a woman who alleged it allowed hackers to access her bank accounts by failing to keep her personal information safe from a data breach, after a Pennsylvania federal judge said Wednesday her complaint "stops short of saying how" Paychex's conduct led to her injury.

  • October 23, 2025

    FCC's Carr Sees Ongoing Consumer Harm From Shutdown

    The head of the Federal Communications Commission warned Thursday that new device and license applications are "just sitting there," creating an FCC backlog, and that other day-to-day but important work remains on hold during the government shutdown.

  • October 23, 2025

    Neb. Republican Says Fiber Critical To Broadband Effort

    A Republican U.S. senator said Thursday she's concerned that rural areas will not receive enough funding for fiber-optic connectivity in the latest round of the government's multibillion-dollar effort to build out broadband to underserved areas.

  • October 23, 2025

    4th Circ. Pushed To Retain Block On Chemours PFAS Dumping

    A pair of environmental groups is urging the Fourth Circuit to leave in place an injunction blocking The Chemours Co. FC LLC from continuing to discharge so-called forever chemicals into the Ohio River, saying the company is using strawman arguments to get its way.

  • October 23, 2025

    Telehealth Ketamine Provider Hit With Wrongful Death Suit

    Online ketamine therapy provider Mindbloom was hit with a wrongful death suit in North Carolina state court by the father of a 27-year-old man who says his medical history should have disqualified him from receiving the allegedly dangerous anesthetic.

  • October 23, 2025

    Tech Org. Calls Next-Gen TV Tuner Mandate Bad Idea

    As the Federal Communications Commission solicits opinions on how to usher the industry into the next generation of television broadcasting, a consumer technology trade group is reiterating its argument that the agency should not rush the process and let companies do what they will.

  • October 23, 2025

    Eli Lilly Says Pharmacy Mass-Producing Weight Loss Drug

    Drugmaker Eli Lilly is suing a compounding pharmacy in Texas federal court, alleging the pharmacy ripped off its lucrative weight loss drug, began mass-producing it, and made as much as $2 million per month last year from its misdeeds.

  • October 23, 2025

    Pet Food Container Maker Sued Over Design After Kitten Dies

    A Pennsylvania woman whose 3-lb. kitten got trapped inside an airtight Iris USA brand pet food container and suffocated to death filed a putative negligence class action in federal court Wednesday, accusing the company of failing to warn pet owners of the risks of pet suffocation associated with the container's design.

  • October 23, 2025

    Senate Clears Bill For FCC List Of Foreign Authorizations

    The U.S. Senate Thursday passed a bill requiring the Federal Communications Commission to publish a list of companies with ties to certain foreign countries that hold FCC authorizations.

  • October 23, 2025

    Shipbuilder Can't Ax Md. Bridge Collapse Suit, Court Told

    The Singaporean owner and manager of the container ship that slammed into Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge and triggered its collapse maintained that South Korean shipbuilder HD Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. should be held accountable in Pennsylvania federal court for designing and building a "fatally flawed" ship.

Expert Analysis

  • 5 Evolving Marketing Risks That Finance Cos. Should Watch

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    Financial services providers should beware several areas where consumer protection regulators are broadening their scrutiny of modern marketing practices, such as the use of influencer testimonials or advertisements touting artificial intelligence-powered products, so they can better adapt to changing expectations for compliance, say attorneys at Hinshaw.

  • CFTC, SEC Joint Statement Highlights New Unity On Crypto

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    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission's recent joint statement announcing a cross-agency initiative enabling certain spot crypto-asset products to trade on regulated exchanges is the earliest and most visible instance of interagency cooperation on crypto regulation, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

  • Understanding And Managing Jurors' Hindsight Bias

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    Hindsight bias — wherein events seem more predictable after the fact than they were beforehand — presents a persistent cognitive distortion in jury decision-making, but attorneys can mitigate its effects at trial through awareness, repetition and framing, say consultants at Courtroom Sciences.

  • Hybrid Claims In Antitrust Disputes Spark Coverage Battles

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    Antitrust litigation increasingly includes claims for breach of warranty, product liability or state consumer protection violations, complicating insurers' reliance on exclusions as courts analyze whether these are antitrust claims in disguise, says Jameson Pasek at Caldwell Law.

  • EU-US Data Transfer Ruling Offers Reassurance To Cos.

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    The European Union General Court’s recent upholding of the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework in Latombe v. European Commission, although subject to appeal, provides companies with legal certainty for the first time by allowing the transfer of European Economic Area personal data without relying on alternative mechanisms, say lawyers at Wilson Sonsini.

  • Drug Ad Crackdown Demonstrates Admin's Aggressive Stance

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    Recent actions by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services targeting pharmaceutical companies' allegedly deceptive advertising practices signal an active — potentially even punitive — intent to regulate direct-to-consumer advertising out of existence, say attorneys at King & Spalding.

  • Protecting Sensitive Court Filings After Recent Cyber Breach

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    In the wake of a recent cyberattack on federal courts' Case Management/Electronic Case Files system, civil litigants should consider seeking enhanced protections for sensitive materials filed under seal to mitigate the risk of unauthorized exposure, say attorneys at Redgrave.

  • DOJ Settlement Offers Guide To Avoiding Key Antitrust Risks

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    The U.S. Justice Department's settlement with Greystar Management shows why parties looking to acquire companies that use pricing recommendation software should carefully examine whether the software algorithm and how it is used in the market create antitrust dangers, say attorneys at Fried Frank.

  • Contractor Considerations As Construction Costs Rebound

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    The U.S. construction industry is navigating rising costs driven by energy and trade policy, which should prompt contractors to review contract structuring, supply chain management and market diversification, among other factors, say attorneys at Cozen O'Connor.

  • Series

    NC Banking Brief: All The Notable Legal Updates In Q3

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    There were several impactful changes to the financial services landscape in North Carolina in the third quarter of the year, including statutory updates, enforcement developments from Office of the Commissioner of Banks, and notable mergers, acquisitions and branch expansions, say attorneys at Moore & Van Allen.

  • Despite Fraud Focus, SEC Still Targeting Technical Violations

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    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission under Chairman Paul Atkins has emphasized its back-to-basics strategy, focusing on identifying and combating fraud and manipulation, but at the same time, it has continued to pursue nonfraud-based actions targeting technical rule violations, a trend that will likely continue, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

  • New Calif. Chatbot Bill May Make AI Assistants Into Liabilities

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    While a pending California bill aims to regulate emotionally engaging chatbots that target children, its definition of "companion chatbot" may cover more ground — potentially capturing virtual assistants used for customer service or tech support, and creating serious legal exposure for businesses, say attorneys at Crowell & Moring.

  • Series

    NY Banking Brief: All The Notable Legal Updates In Q3

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    Of note in the third quarter of the year, New York state regulators moved forward on their agendas to limit abuse of electronic banking, including via a settlement with stablecoin issuer Paxos and a lawsuit against Zelle alleging insufficient security measures, says Chris Bonner at Barclay Damon.

  • Series

    Judging Figure Skating Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Judging figure skating competitions helps me hone the focus, decisiveness and ability to process complex real-time information I need in court, but more importantly, it makes me reengage with a community and my identity outside of law, which, paradoxically, always brings me back to work feeling restored, says Megan Raymond at Groombridge Wu.

  • Series

    Calif. Banking Brief: All The Notable Legal Updates In Q3

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    The third quarter of 2025 brought legislative changes to state money transmission certification requirements and securities law obligations, as well as high-profile accounting and anti-money laundering compliance enforcement actions by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, say attorneys at Ropes & Gray.

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