Consumer Advocate Legal Update : Class Action Lawyers & Attorneys : Khorrami Pollard & Abir Law Firm : Mass Torts, Products Liability

A recent medical review article promoted the benefits of smoking for long-distance runners. The article argued that the increased serum hemoglobin levels, larger lung volume, and reduced body weight associated with smoking cigarettes could be beneficial for running. Although this may sound like it came from the parody newspaper The Onion, this article was published in the highly respected Canadian Medical Association Journal, which ranks 9^th out of the top 40 medical journals. Of course, the article was meant to be tongue in cheek. Ken Myers, the author and a long-distance runner himself, wrote the article to point out how nearly any crazy theory can be supporting by presenting only supporting data or improperly correlating or extrapolating data.

Medical review articles can have subjective bias. Sometimes, the researcher will have a noble goal which allows his or her research to be subjectively tainted, a phenomenon known as “white hat bias.” Other times, data may be entirely fabricated to support a certain position, such as the case of medical journal publisher Elsevier publishing fake medical journals for Merck and other pharmaceutical giants. Part of the blame can also be placed on newspapers for not understanding or explaining the difference between correlation (when A happens, B also likely happens) and causation (B happens because of A) and generalizing very specific findings into sensationalized larger conclusions. Another important consideration that newspapers usually neglect is that medical studies need context and do not make sense without knowing what similar studies have shown.

Consumers do not need to be overly concerned with scientific minutiae on a daily basis, but it is important to not base important life decisions, such as which life-saving drugs to request of a doctor or avoid, off of a misunderstanding (or occasional fraud) from a medical review article. Well-informed skepticism is always a healthy choice!

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The plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit filed against Ticketmaster have submitted a proposed a settlement to the Los Angeles Superior Court. The lawsuit,Curt Schlesinger et al. v. Ticketmaster, was filed by Ticketmaster customers who claim Ticketmaster wrongfully charged customers excessive UPS delivery fees and/or order processing fees in connection with ticket sales.
Thecomplaint alleges that Ticketmaster violated the California Business & Professions Code by engaging in unfair and deceptive practices.

The “Ticketmaster Fees” section found on the Ticketmaster FAQ webpage says that the order processing fee “…covers the cost to fulfill your ticket request when you purchase the tickets online or by phone.” The charge also includes “services, such as taking and maintaining your order on our ticketing systems, arranging for shipping and/or coordinating with the box office will call…”

The class plaintiffs claim that the order processing fee was deceptive because it was unrelated to the actual cost of processing tickets. According to the complaint, the fee was a “profit generator designed to maximize Ticketmaster’s overall profit by obtaining bottom-line dollar amount on deals with its clients, and had no known connection to the actual ticket fulfillment costs.”
The class plaintiffs also assert that the UPS delivery fees charged by Ticketmaster were deceptive because Ticketmaster marked up the amount it actually paid to UPS and pocketed the difference.
Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, deny any wrongdoing and the proposed settlement has yet to be approved by the court.
 

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The U.S. Department of Education announced on Sept. 24 that it would move forward with tighter regulations on the for-profit education sector, which are designed to protect students from misleading recruitment practices and from running up huge debts, among other issues. The proposal the Department of Education released last month would require for-profit schools to ensure that their graduates earn at least enough to start repaying federally backed student loans. If not, the schools would risk losing access to those loans.  Students at for-profits have a higher likelihood of retaining debt than not-for-profit schools. In fact, students at for-profits are twice as likely to default as students at nonprofits. Proponents of the new rule say they are not interested in driving for-profits out of business, just in stopping students from borrowing more than they can afford to repay. The Department of Education says these regulations will heighten its ability to penalize institutions that have significantly misrepresented their programs to prospective students.  Additionally, the proposed regulations will crack down on loopholes which allowed for-profit schools to avoid legislation forbidding recruiters from being compensated based on the number of students that they are able to recruit. Such limits would help to curb some high-pressure sales tactics that for-profit colleges enlist via recruiters.

The for-profit education business has responded with an aggressive campaign to rally public opinion to its side. For-profits have been urging students to write letters to the government during the comment period on the rule. The Department of Education received about 90,000 comments critiquing the proposed regulations in the 90 days following their announcement. Following this response, the Department has agreed to meet with representatives of for-profit schools and education advocacy groups on Nov. 4 and 5 at department headquarters in Washington.

Final regulations are scheduled for publication on or around November 1, 2010, and will go into effect on July 1, 2011. The impact of the rule on students and for-profit schools won't be clear until the new rule is issued in November.

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