| Volume 141 Number 53 |
Subscribe to the Newsletter
Forward this news alert to your family and friends
Helpful Links
Texas Consumer Complaint Center
Credit Reports and Identity Theft
Your Guide to Small Claims Court
Contact Us
1-713-743-2168
The People’s Lawyer’s Tip of the Day
If you, or someone you know, were displaced after Hurricane Florence or Michael, finding a new place to live is a priority. But before you pay any money, be cautious of rental listing scams. Scammers often advertise rentals that don’t exist to trick people into sending money before they find out the truth. Click here for more.
Food Poisoning in Packaged Food: What You Must Know
Since Oct. 16, there have been at least 13 recalls of ready-made foods, such as salads, sandwiches, wraps, pizza, and burritos, due to potential salmonella and listeria contamination. All of these foods have been traced back to a single plant owned by McCain Foods, in Colton, Calif., which processes, cooks, and freezes vegetables for distribution to other food producers. To date, almost 4 million pounds of food sold under many different brand names have been recalled, and the Food and Drug Administration says more recalled products may still be announced. Click here for more.
Your Money
Yahoo’s new owners, Verizon and Altaba, have agreed to pay $50 million in damages for the 200 million Yahoo account holders in the U.S. and Israel who had their data compromised in 2013 and 2014, the Associated Press reports. In 2013, Yahoo suffered a data breach that is said to have exposed the personal information of all three billion of its users. A second one happened the following year, which affected 500 million accounts. Information compromised in the breaches included names, birthdays, email addresses, encrypted passwords, and more. It took two years for Yahoo to reveal the two breaches. Late on Monday, a class action lawsuit against Yahoo finally reached a settlement, although it only covers approximately 200 million people in the U.S. and Israel who had their information stolen. Click here for more.
For the Lawyers
NY Credit Card Law Requires Full Price be posted. The New York Court of Appeals, in answer to a certified question from the Second Circuit, held merchants must post the total amount charged to customers who pay with credit cards in dollars and cents to stay compliant with a state statute over surcharges on credit cards, A majority opinion found that Section 518 of the New York General Business Law is violated when merchants do not post the full dollars-and-cents price for customers using credit cards. The ruling held that the merchants’ preferred method of posting a charge for credit card use as an additional percentage or dollar value of the price charged to cash or check customers runs afoul of state law. “Plaintiffs’ proposed single-sticker pricing scheme — which does not express the total dollars-and-cents credit card price and instead requires consumers to engage in an arithmetical calculation in order to figure it out — is prohibited by the statute,” the majority concluded. Expressions Hair Design et al. v. Schneiderman et al., case numbers 13-4533 and 13-4537, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Click here for more.