Articles

02.17.17

Jury Hits Dish With $20M TCPA Verdict

A federal jury has awarded $20.5 million against Dish Network for calls made by a third party in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action.Although he was included on the federal Do Not Call Registry, Thomas Krakauer claimed that he received multiple phone calls from authorized Dish dealer ...


02.16.17

UC Berkeley Unfairly Criticized in Wake of Protest

After the violence that shut down the speech of the provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley, the University has come under substantial criticism—including from President Trump, who tweeted a threat to defund it. Many have trotted out the old yarn that the University is nothing more than ...


02.15.17

Criticism of CalPERS Is Often Misplaced

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think CalPERS is the source of all California’s ills: higher taxes, bankrupt cities, reduced public services, lavish pensions—the list goes on. We’ve even been blamed for failing to catch the fact that Wells Fargo employees were ...


02.14.17

The Future of Essential Health Benefits

The Essential Health Benefits (EHB) rule may be among the many parts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that are on the chopping block as the Trump Administration and Congress seek to repeal and replace the law. Essential Health Benefits, which define what health care benefits plans in the ...


02.14.17

The Digital Content Market in Mexico

Today’s global content market is constantly evolving. The rise of digital platforms has created new and exciting opportunities for production, distribution, and consumption of content. Producers and distributors are meeting their audiences where they live, which is increasingly on digital ...


02.13.17

Spotlight on the False Claims Act

Why it matters: The False Claims Act (FCA) continued to prove itself a powerful tool to combat fraud on the government in 2016. In December 2016, the DOJ released figures showing that, for fiscal year 2016, it had collected over $4.7 billion, its “third highest annual recovery in False ...


02.10.17

Social Media Communications Insufficient to Order Halt, Court Rules

Why it mattersAn employer lost a motion requesting a California federal court limit the communications of the plaintiff's counsel in a wage and hour dispute. Jerrod Finder filed a putative class action against Leprino Foods Company, alleging that his employer violated California wage law. While ...


02.09.17

FTC Clamps Down on Homeopathic Products

Homeopathy is a system of alternative medicine created in 1796 in Germany. The system is based on the principle that “like cures like,” meaning that a substance that causes the symptoms of a disease in healthy people can also be used to cure similar symptoms in sick people. In fact, the ...


02.09.17

Apple Ad out of Tune With Publicity Rights, Says New Suit

A new lawsuit accuses Apple of violating the publicity rights of a singer who says an iPhone ad illegally samples his voice. Jerome Lawson, the lead singer of the 1970s group The Persuasions, does not allege that Apple violated the copyright in the song “Good Times,” perhaps because he ...


02.09.17

New Suit: JCPenney Scammed Consumers With Deceptive Pricing

The latest company to be hit with a deceptive pricing class action: JCPenney, charged with falsely inflating “original” prices to create a misleading impression of big discounts that don’t actually exist.Kansas resident Ann Cavlovic claimed that she fell for the tactic when she ...