Consumer Contracts Posts
Restatement of the Law, Consumer Contracts Is Available
This Restatement seeks to clarify how the courts have applied contract law embodied in the Restatement of the Law Second, Contracts to transactions that either were not contemplated at the time the earlier Restatement was completed.
ALI-ELI Webinar on the Use of Automated Decision-Making and Consumer Law
On February 8, ALI and ELI will host a webinar on the use of automated decision-making and consumer law.
Project Updates from the 2022 ALI Annual Meeting
Learn more about the actions taken at this year’s ALI Annual Meeting, held last month, where the membership met to discuss and vote on twelve ALI project drafts.
Restatement of the Law, Consumer Contracts: Significant Black Letter Changes Since 2019 Annual Meeting
This post is excerpted from a piece originally featured in the spring 2022 edition of The ALI Reporter.
January 2022 Council Meeting Updates
At its meeting on January 20 and 21, 2022, the ALI Council reviewed and discussed Council Drafts of nine projects.
Warranty, Product Liability and Transaction Structure: The Problem of Amazon
This article asks the question: Should Amazon be considered a “warrantor” for the purposes of making the implied warranty of merchantability when it serves as an intermediary between a third-party seller and a consumer buyer?
The Mysterious Market for Post-Settlement Litigant Finance
This Article is the first to present systematic, large-scale data on post-settlement litigant funding—the type of funding most NFL players reportedly received.
Ending the Use of Customer Arbitration
A recent article published in the New York Times discusses Amazon’s change to its legal complaints process for its customers. Until recently, Amazon customers were required to pursue disputes with the company through a private arbitration process instead of through the courts.
Incorporation of Standard Contract Terms on Websites
The draft of the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Consumer Contracts reflects the jurisdiction of the US courts on the ‘adoption’ (as the draft calls it) of standard contract terms into consumer contracts. This draft is of great value to European lawyers in understanding US developments, but it may also stimulate a reflection on the state and possible evolution of European legal systems.
Consumer Contracts and the Restatement Project
The Restatement project presumes the exercise of nonpartisan judgment. Some criticisms of the draft are more political tracts than analytic critiques. Because the Draft does a good job analyzing and distilling the law, the real question in this debate is whether the ALI and the Restatement project as a whole can withstand efforts to use the tools and standards of retail politics to defeat the analytic approach of the Draft. To the extent such efforts succeed, the Restatement concept as a whole will fail.