It hasn’t gotten a lot of press, but a case involving AT&T that goes before the
U.S. Supreme Court

next week has sweeping ramifications for potentially millions of consumers.

If a majority of the nine justices vote the telecom giant’s way, any business that issues a contract to customers - such as for credit cards, cellphones or cable TV - would be able to prevent them from joining class-action lawsuits.

This would take away in such cases arguably the most powerful legal tool available to the little guy, particularly in cases involving relatively small amounts of money. Class-action suits allow plaintiffs to band together in seeking compensation or redress, thus giving substantially more heft to their claims.

The ability to ban class actions would potentially also apply to employment agreements such as union contracts.

Consumer advocates say that without the threat of class-action lawsuits, many businesses would be free to engage in unfair or deceptive practices. Few people would litigate on their own to resolve a case involving, say, a hundred bucks.

‘The marketplace is fairer for consumers and workers because there’s a deterrent out there,’ said Deepak Gupta, an attorney for the advocacy group Public Citizen who will argue on consumers’ behalf before the […]

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Next fall, US politics will officially become a reality show.

Amid the upcoming Republican presidential campaigns, the conservative Fox News Channel stands to benefit more than any of its competitors because they ‘own’ most of the candidates, according to one the network’s leading anchors.

Chris Wallace phoned in to Fox Business Network’s Imus in the Morning Thursday to talk about his recent appearance on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. Wallace had half-jokingly explained to Comedy Central host Jon Stewart how Fox News was planning to profit from the fact that so many GOP contenders work at the network.

‘We’re thinking of a 13 week series like American Idol or Dancing with the Stars: The GOP Presidential Primary,’ Wallace said.

The next day, Wallace was actually serious when he made essentially the same pitch to Don Imus.

‘As I said on Stewart, because we own all of the people who are running for president, we’re going to turn it into a 13-week series, like Dancing with the Stars or something,’ he said.

‘The Republican primaries will be a production of Fox News,’ Wallace added.

The marketing of Republican presidential candidates is already underway at the network. In a new special, host Bret Baier will profile 12 top potential […]

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Can you forge an emotional bond with a brand so strong that, if forced to buy a competitor’s product, you suffer separation anxiety? According to a new study from the USC Marshall School of Business, the answer is yes. In fact, that bond can be strong enough that consumers are willing to sacrifice time, money, energy and reputation to maintain their attachment to that brand.

‘Brand Attachment and Brand Attitude Strength: Conceptual and Empirical Differentiation of Two Critical Brand Equity Drivers,’ a study published in the November issue of the Journal of Marketing, is co-authored by USC Marshall’s C. Whan Park, Joseph A. DeBell Professor of Marketing; Deborah J. MacInnis, Vice Dean of Research and Charles L. and Ramona I. Hilliard Professor of Business Administration; and Joseph Priester, Associate Professor of Marketing; along with Andreas B. Eisingerich, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Imperial College (London) Business School; and Dawn Iacobucci, E. Bronson Ingram Professor in Marketing, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, indicates that brand attachment has much stronger impact on consumers than previously believed. In fact, the study suggests, brand attachment can even be strong enough to induce separation anxiety when favorite brands are replaced.

The study advances existing brand research […]

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San Francisco, California (CNN) — San Francisco city officials are readying to ban most of McDonald’s Happy Meals in current form because they offer toys to entice kids to buy meals not meeting nutritional criteria.

Under a proposal given preliminary approval this week, McDonald’s and other restaurants would have until December 2011 to improve their meals’ nutrition with fruits and vegetables — if the chains want to keep offering Captain America figurines or toys tied with latest films.

The proposed ordinance is part of a ‘food justice movement’ and is designed to address how about 50 of the city’s restaurants use giveaway toys to sell fast food whose nutritional content is being challenged by the city.

Officials said they hope their measure, the first of its kind for a large city, would encourage similar standards across the country. The San Francisco proposal was modeled after a similar law for unincorporated Santa Clara County, California,

San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar, who initiated the proposal, said the ordinance would be ‘a tremendous victory’ in fighting childhood obesity. His fifth-grade daughter is in the 6-to-11 age group in which rates of obesity have quadrupled the past 30 years — coinciding with the life span of the Happy […]

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CHICAGO — Americans will keep growing fatter until 42 percent of the nation is considered obese, and having fat friends is part of the problem, researchers said on Thursday.

The prediction by a team of researchers at Harvard University contradicts other experts who say the nation’s obesity rate has peaked at 34 percent of the U.S. population.

The finding is from the same group, led by Nicholas Christakis, that reported in 2007 that if someone’s friend becomes obese, that person’s chances of becoming obese increase by more than half.

They now think this same phenomenon is driving the obesity epidemic, which will climb slowly but steadily for the next 40 years.

Alison Hill, a graduate student at Harvard and the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of Health Sciences and Technology, said the study is based on the idea that obesity can spread like an infectious disease and people can catch it from their friends.

For the study, she and colleagues applied a mathematical model to four decades of data from the long-running Framingham study — a study of the health and habits of nearly an entire town in Massachusetts.

‘We looked at the probability of becoming obese and what that was influenced by,’ Hill said in […]

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