New York Paralegal Blog

Marketers of a weight-loss patch have agreed to pay $110,539 to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they violated two 2004 consent orders by continuing to make false claims that their product causes substantial weight loss and weight loss in all users. After agreeing to the 2004 consent orders, the marketers continued making the same bogus claims they had made previously, but this time they targeted consumers abroad. They made these claims in brochures accompanying shipments of the patches that were intended for sale to overseas consumers. In 2004, Advanced Patch Technologies (APT), its distributor, Buckhead Marketing & Distribution LLC (Buckhead), and their officers, settled FTC charges of deceptive marketing based on their claims that, among other things, the “Peel Away the Pounds” patch would cause substantial weight loss when applied to the skin. That settlement required the defendants to pay more than $1 million in consumer redress. More...

A bill intended to prevent parties from using the federal judicial process to conceal matters that harm the public health or safety circumvents the prescribed method of changing court rules, a federal judge told a congressional subcommittee. U.S. District Judge Mark Kravitz of Connecticut testified in behalf of the Judicial Conference of the United States before the House Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law. He chairs the Conference’s Advisory Committee on Civil Rules. Kravitz said the Conference opposes the Sunshine in Litigation Act of 2008 (H.R. 5884) “on the ground that it effectively amends the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure outside the rule-making process,” contrary to federal law. “Direct amendment of the federal rules through legislation, even when the rule-making process has been completed, circumvents the careful safeguards that Congress itself established,” he said. The bill at issue would impose requirements on federal judges for sealing certain materials in...