Today the Federal Trade Commission announced a new rule directed specifically at regulating the debt relief industry. Initially proposed eleven months ago, the new rule implements a vast set of requirements and prohibitions, including an absolute ban on charging any fees to consumers before settlements are reached with creditors.

FTC Amends Telemarketing Sales Rule: On July 29, 2010, the FTC announced new amendments to the Telemarketing Sales Rule that will prohibit debt relief companies from collecting advanced fees.

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission announcedamendments to the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) relating to the telemarketing of debt relief services, including new restrictions on advance fees charged by debt relief companies.

Expect the unexpected from your Web site privacy policy. In a handful of cases, including two which were recently decided, companies have been thwarted in various, unexpected ways by the commitments made in their online privacy policies.

Are your intellectual property litigators reading your privacy policy?

After receiving a letter from David Vladeck, the Director of the Bureau of Consumer Affairs at the Federal Trade Commission, a bankruptcy judge allowed the destruction of personal information of gay teens who subscribed to the now defunct XY magazine.

Previously, on June 16, 2010, the Joint Administrators (the “Administrators”) of Lehman Brothers International (Europe) (“LBIE”) announced that they would be testing the feasibility of their so-called Consensual Approach to the resolution of LBIE’s unsecured creditor claims. They anticipated the Consensual Approach would be applicable to financial trading creditors ("FTCs") and conceptually outlined the Consensual Approach as follows:

The judge presiding over the bankruptcy proceeding of the operator of a Web site and magazine aimed at gay teens has approved a settlement allowing the destruction of personal information of users rather than a sale to creditors as part of the bankruptcy estate. The court approved the settlement after the Federal Trade Commission raised objections to the sale, citing the Web site sign-up confirmation page, which stated that "[w]e never give your info to anybody," and a similar statement directed to subscribers of an associated print magazine.

On December 1, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) issued an administrative complaint challenging Laboratory Corporation of America’s (“LabCorp”) consummated acquisition of rival Westcliff Medical Laboratories, Inc. (“Westcliff”). The FTC alleged that the acquisition, which was completed in June, would substantially lessen competition among providers of capitated clinical laboratory testing services to physician groups in Southern California.

The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, which is overseeing the liquidation of the insurer in the coverage dispute, entered an order approving the insurer’s denial of coverage under an excess policy for a $20 million settlement that two individual insureds paid into a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) redress fund. The court adopted the recommendation of the referee appointed to hear the coverage dispute, who applied California law and concluded that the insurer was entitled to summary judgment following briefing and oral argument. Wiley Rein represented the insurer before the referee.

RadioShack filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware bankruptcy court in February, seeking a court-supervised sale of $1.2 billion in assets. Included in the sale is a database of customer information from about 1,700 stores regarding RadioShack’s 117 million customers.