Consumer protection broadly describes the body of law designed to protect consumers and competing businesses from companies using unfair or deceptive business practices to gain an unfair advantage. Yet businesses often employ illegal practices – be it greed, corporate expediency, negligence, or oversight. These illegal practices hurt consumers financially and distort the marketplace by allowing dishonest businesses to gain an unfair advantage over ethical competitors. We fight to protect consumers, and advance fair trade, fair competition, and transparency in our marketplace.

False Advertising

When businesses falsely advertise, consumers are led to believe something that is simply not true and duped into paying (or overpaying) for a good or service. Common types of false and misleading advertising are bait-and-switch schemes; insufficient safety warnings; false promises; and misleading claims about the quality, quantity, or ingredients in a product. Consumers are legally protected from these deceptive marketing schemes.

Greenwashing

Greenwashing is a form of false advertising – businesses mislead consumers into believing goods or services are more environmentally conscious, safe, sustainable, or have a greater positive environmental impact than they actually do. Greenwashing is illegal, unfair and undermines credible efforts to address global climate crisis.

Data Breach & Privacy Violations

Technological surveillance of personal data is rapidly rising, digitally tracking private data such as finances, health records, communications, and even spending behaviors. The collection, processing, and retention of private information is regulated to protect your right to privacy from unlawful intrusion. We preserve consumers’ privacy against these intrusive violations

Telephone Consumer Protection Act

Intrusive telemarketing and abusive debt collection violate the fundamental right to privacy. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act prohibits all unsolicited telemarketing, robocalls, prerecorded voice calls, and spam text messages.

Defective Products

Consumers trust products to be safe and reliable, providing sufficient instruction, with prominent warning of hazards. Unfortunately, defective products enter the marketplace and end up in consumers’ hands. When this happens, responsible parties must be held accountable.

Billing Fraud

Automatic billing schemes, frauds involving “free trials,” and other recurring charges have a high potential for widespread fraud and abuse. This includes auto payments for insurance, cable and phone services, cell phone applications, gaming portals, and other online services.

Hidden Fees

Unexpected fees harm consumers economically and unfairly skew the marketplace. Industries infamous for hiding fees are travel, hospitality, entertainment, and financial institutions. California mandates all fees and charges be included when offering the price for a good or service (other than government-imposed taxes or fees and actual postage or carriage charges).

While these deceptive practices may have small incremental impacts on individual transactions, they frequently impact thousands or even millions of individuals. This is why class actions are critical. By pooling relatively small injuries of consumers together in a single lawsuit, class actions can hold corporations responsible, expel ill-gotten gains, and influence changes to their business practices. One individual can be a champion for consumer rights and marketplace transparency.