CreditSlips

New Consumer Law Conference - Call for Papers

09/06/18

Exciting news for consumer law scholars. To the best of my knowledge, the first ever conference in the United States dedicated expressly to scholarship in the field of consumer law is happening in February 2019 at the new Berkeley Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice. Details from the call for papers:

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Timing and Process in Crystallex v. PDVSA

09/03/18

In an earlier post, I noted some open questions that had to be answered before Crystallex could execute on PDVSA’s 100% ownership stake in PDV Holding (PDV-H).

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Pets and Financial Distress

08/24/18

Last weekend, The New York Times published an opinion piece about animal shelters, Are We Loving Shelter Dogs to Death? It highlighted the sad reality that nationwide shelters are horribly overcrowded.

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Facebook: the new Credit Reporting Agency?

08/22/18

Facebook, it seems, has developed a system of rating users trustworthiness. It's not clear if this is just a system for internal use or if users' trustworthiness scores are for sale to third parties, but if the latter, then would sure seem that Facebook is a Consumer Reporting Agency and subject to CRA provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

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Westlaw: A Digital Deportation Machine?

08/19/18

Lawyers and legal academics may be surprised to learn that Thomson Reuters, owners of the Westlaw electronic law library, sells its data to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, and reserves the right in its privacy policy to share browsing history and search terms with law enforcement agencies. My colleague Sarah Lamdan explores the ethical issues for lawyers and the legal publishers in a recent paper, "When Westlaw Fuels ICE Surveillance: Ethics in the Big Data Policing Era." 

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Some Thoughts on the Alter Ego Ruling in Crystallex

08/11/18

I have had a bit of time to digest the district court’s ruling that PDVSA is Venezuela’s alter ego, and here are some preliminary thoughts. The opinion is 75 pages and covers a lot of ground, but I’ll focus on perhaps the most important and least technical question: Is the case a one-off or a harbinger?

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Court Lets Crystallex Attach Equity in CITGO Parent

08/10/18

Just a quick post for now, as the court is keeping its opinion under seal for the time being. Crystallex, a creditor of Venezuela, has been trying to enforce its claims by attaching PDVSA's equity interest in PDV Holding, the ultimate U.S. parent of CITGO.

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