Patrick Austermuehle

Connect: https://www.lexblog.com/author/patrickaustermuehle/feed/
Firm/Organization: Lubin Austermuehle, P.C.
Blogs: Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog

Latest Articles

In early 2017, the Consumer Review Fairness Act (CRFA), 15 U.S.C. §45b, took effect. With the passage of this law, the Federal Trade Commission has begun using the CRFA to crack down on businesses that use non-disparagement provisions in consumer contracts to attempt to prevent consumers from posting negative reviews in order to make a product seem more favorable than it really is. To date the FTC has launched numerous investigations into suspected violations of…
Real product reviews are a great tool for helping consumers make better, informed decisions. Many of these reviews come from real customers who really used the product. Other reviews, however—particularly those on websites, in blogs, and on social media—are not from legitimate customers but come from companies that use fake reviews to paint a pretty picture of their products and boost their bottom line. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) set its sights…
A federal judge reversed himself and reinstated part of a defamation lawsuit filed by Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann against The Washington Post. The lawsuit alleged that the newspaper libeled the teen in its coverage of his encounter with a Native American activist at the Lincoln Memorial earlier this year. The federal judge assigned to the case, Judge William O. Bertelsman, originally dismissed the suit back in July on First Amendment grounds. After…
Earlier this year, a federal grand jury indicted pioneer of self-driving car technology and serial entrepreneur, Anthony Levandowski, with trade secret theft. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California charged Levandowski with 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets from Google under 18 U.S.C. § 1832 of the Economic Espionage Act (EEA). According to the indictment, Levandowski allegedly downloaded more than 14,000 files containing crucial information about…
Earlier this month McDonald’s announced suddenly that the board had voted to terminate CEO Steve Easterbrook due to a consensual relationship with another McDonald’s employee. The day after firing Easterbrook, McDonald’s outlined the terms of Easterbrook’s severance package in a filing with the Securities Exchange Commission. Easterbrook will receive 26 weeks of salary as severance, totaling at least $675,000 before benefits. In addition, he will be eligible for a prorated bonus if McDonald’s hits…
Most of us have become accustomed to the idea of saying just about anything on social media without having to face any real consequences for our words, but Elon Musk is about to go to trial over a couple of words he posted on Twitter in the summer of 2018. You might remember the case of the boys’ soccer team and their coach trapped in a cave in Thailand for several days before rescuers were…
Netflix released its movie about the Panama Papers on October 18th, and while fictional versions of Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca narrate the story of the movie to “tell their side”, the real-life Mossack and Fonseca are suing Netflix for defamation. Mossack and Fonseca are the two lawyers who founded and ran the law firm Mossack Fonseca out of Panama. Their law firm controlled the finances for companies for people all over the world. These…
As consumers have started to recognize the unhealthy effects of consuming corn syrup, more and more food and beverage manufacturers have removed or limited its use in their products. While beer has never been considered a health food, the battle over corn syrup appears to have made its way to the world of beer, starting with Anheuser-Busch’s Superbowl commercial showing an order of corn syrup being delivered by mistake to the castle of the fictional…
Jared Pozner, who lost his 6-year-old son, Noah, in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, has had to deal with attacks from everyone from the hosts of radio shows to the authors of books claiming he’s lying about his son’s death. In addition to the HONR Networking, an advocacy group that puts pressure on social media sites like Facebook to remove false or misleading information about the Sandy Hook shooting, Pozner…
While buying a used car might sound like a great way to save money, a new investigation allegedly found that buying from AutoNation could mean the possibility of buying a car that AutoNation knows is defective (or is subject to recall) but never bothered to have repaired or to resolve the recall issue. There is a federal law that prevents auto dealers from selling new defective automobiles, but there is no such law to prevent…