Consumer Protection

  • 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 Oct. 23.

  • 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.

  • October 23, 2025

    Feds, Ex-Magellan CEO Still Split Over Sentencing Factors

    Lawyers for a former Magellan Diagnostics CEO and the government are still at odds over whether a judge should consider the product mislabeling charge she pled guilty to in March to be tantamount to fraud — an assertion the defense says is an attempt by prosecutors to "shoehorn" in allegations never put to proof.

Expert Analysis

  • Analyzing AI's Evolving Role In Class Action Claims Admin

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    Artificial intelligence is becoming a strategic asset in the hands of skilled litigators, reshaping everything from class certification strategy to claims analysis — and now, the nuts and bolts of settlement administration, with synthetic fraud, algorithmic review and ethical tension emerging as central concerns, says Dominique Fite at CPT Group.

  • 11th Circ.'s FCRA Standing Ruling Offers Compliance Lessons

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    The Eleventh Circuit's recent decision in Nelson v. Experian on establishing Article III standing under the Fair Credit Reporting Act should prompt businesses to survey FCRA compliance programs, review open matters for standing defenses and refresh training materials, say attorneys at Nixon Peabody.

  • What Novel NIL Suit Reveals About College Sports Landscape

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    A first-of-its-kind name, image and likeness lawsuit — recently filed in Wisconsin state court by the University of Wisconsin-Madison against the University of Miami — highlights new challenges and risks following the NCAA’s landmark agreement to allow schools to make NIL deals and share revenue with student-athletes, say attorneys at O'Melveny.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Mastering Time Management

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    Law students typically have weeks or months to prepare for any given deadline, but the unpredictability of practicing in the real world means that lawyers must become time-management pros, ready to adapt to scheduling conflicts and unexpected assignments at any given moment, says David Thomas at Honigman.

  • How Prohibiting Trigger Leads May Affect Mortgage Marketing

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    Recent amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act prohibiting the sale of trigger leads mark a significant shift in the regulatory landscape for mortgage lenders, third-party lead generators and their legal counsel, who should reevaluate lead generation strategies and compliance protocols, say Joel Herberman, Rob Robilliard and Leah Dempsey at Brownstein Hyatt.

  • Privacy Policy Lessons After Google App Data Verdict

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    In Rodriguez v. Google, a California federal jury recently found that Google unlawfully invaded app users' privacy by collecting, using and disclosing pseudonymized data, highlighting the complex interplay between nonpersonalized data and customers' understanding of privacy policy choices, says Beth Waller at Woods Rogers.

  • How Hyperlinks Are Changing E-Discovery Responsibilities

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    A recent e-discovery dispute over hyperlinked data in Hubbard v. Crow shows how courts have increasingly broadened the definition of control to account for cloud-based evidence, and why organizations must rethink preservation practices to avoid spoliation risks, says Bree Murphy at Exterro.

  • CFPB Proposal Defining Consumer Risk May Add Uncertainty

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    Though a recent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposal would codify when risks to consumers justify supervisory intervention against nonbanks, furthering Trump administration plans to curtail CFPB authority, firms may still struggle to identify what could attract supervisory designation under the new rule, say attorneys at Steptoe.

  • Targeting Execs Could Hurt SEC's Probusiness Goals

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    While many enforcement changes under the Trump administration’s U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission have been touted by commission leadership as proinnovation and probusiness, a planned focus on holding individual directors and officers responsible for wrongdoing may have the opposite effect, say attorneys at MoFo.

  • Navigating The Risks Of Employee-Influencers, Side Gigs

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    Though companies may be embracing employee-influencer roles, this growing trend — along with an increase in gig employment — presents compliance risks, particularly around employee classification, compensation and workplace policies, as the line between work, influence and outside employment becomes increasingly blurred, say attorneys at Squire Patton.

  • Assessing Potential Ad Tech Remedies Ahead Of Google Trial

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    The Virginia federal judge tasked with prying open Google’s digital advertising monopoly faces a smorgasbord of potential remedies, all with different implications for competition, government control and consumers' internet experience, but compromises reached in the parallel Google search monopoly litigation may point a way forward, say attorneys at MoloLamken.

  • Earned Wage Access Providers Face State Law Labyrinth

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    At least 12 states have established laws or rules regulating services that allow employees to access earned wages before payday, with more laws potentially to follow suit, creating an evolving state licensing maze even for fintech providers that partner with banks, say attorneys at Venable.

  • Strategies To Get The Most Out Of A Mock Jury Exercise

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    A Florida federal jury’s recent $329 million verdict against Tesla over a fatal crash demonstrates how jurors’ perceptions of nuanced facts can make or break a case, and why attorneys must maximize the potential of their mock jury exercises to pinpoint the best trial strategy, says Jennifer Catero at Snell & Wilmer.

  • Series

    Writing Musicals Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    My experiences with writing musicals and practicing law have shown that the building blocks for both endeavors are one and the same, because drama is necessary for the law to exist, says Addison O’Donnell at LOIS Law.

  • What Prop 65 Ruling Means For Cosmetics, Personal Care Biz

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    A California federal court's recent decision on Proposition 65 warnings is good news for companies in the cosmetics and personal care space, as it will relieve businesses of the need to apply such warnings to products containing titanium dioxide and likely stop a wave of pending failure-to-warn litigation, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

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