Articles Posted in Consumer Fraud/Consumer Protection

By now it’s common knowledge that you shouldn’t believe everything you see on the Internet. At the same time, many people regularly use the Internet to look up information on people, places, and businesses.

One Web directory, Spokeo Inc., is currently facing a lawsuit for posting inaccurate information of Thomas Robins on their website. Robins’s profile on Spokeo listed him as being in his 50s with a graduate degree, employed in a professional or technical field, with very strong economic health, a very high wealth level, and a wife and children.

Although Robins acknowledges his profile did have some accurate information, he says he was unemployed at the time the false information was posted in 2010, he does not have a graduate degree, is not married, has no children, and is not in his 50s. Continue reading ›

Class actions are an extremely useful tool that benefit both plaintiffs and the courts. When plaintiffs suffer small damages that are not large enough to justify the expenses associated with filing a lawsuit, a class action allows multiple plaintiffs with similar complaints to combine their claims into one lawsuit. This also saves the courts time and money by preventing them from getting flooded with numerous lawsuits of the same nature.

Companies who conduct business all over the country sometimes face multiple class action lawsuits in different courts. Depending on where the jurisdiction falls, these class action lawsuits can sometimes be combined into one, large, nation-wide class action lawsuit. Continue reading ›

NPR reports  Pacquiao Sued For Failing To Disclose Shoulder Injury in ‘Fight Of The Century’.

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New science is always coming out to tout the benefits of this or that new drug or supplement. Recently, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) has been touted as instrumental for maintaining a healthy brain. DHA is an omega-3 fatty acid that constitutes a primary structural component of the human brain, as well as other vital organs. As a result, drug companies have started including it in their supplements and advertising their products as having the ability to boost brain health and performance based on their inclusion of DHA.

For example, Bayer Healthcare allegedly advertised their Flintstones Healthy Brain Support Gummies as improving brain function because the gummies contain Omega-3 DHA. Liza Gershman has filed a class action consumer lawsuit against Bayer alleging there is no scientific evidence to support the assertion that DHA improves brain function. To back up this claim, Gershman sites five studies that found no significant difference between a placebo and DHA derived from algae (the same form of DHA used in Bayer’s supplements) on cognitive function. Continue reading ›

The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has strict standards for prescription drugs before they can be sold to the public. They must undergo rigorous testing to validate their ingredients and effectiveness before being allowed to go to market.

Not everyone wants to take prescription drugs though. Many people prefer to first try natural alternatives, and that often includes supplements. Other people use supplements simply to make sure they are getting enough of the proper nutrients if they think their diet might be lacking. Either way, there’s plenty of money to be made in the supplements industry, and that opportunity, coupled with a lack of regulations, creates a strong temptation for some manufacturers to cheat.

When there’s big money to be made, there are usually people in place to make sure nothing interferes. Senator Orrin G. Hatch, for example, was a sponsor and chief architect of the 1994 law exempting supplements from the FDA’s strict approval process used for prescription drugs. Hatch has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the supplement industry and repeatedly intervened in Washington against proposed legislation that would put in place more stringent rules regarding supplements. Continue reading ›

Companies often invest a lot of money in the products they sell, especially new products that have recently been released. They spend money on advertising and they sometimes train employees in retail stores to conduct demonstrations of their new product.

One company that recently launched a new product and talked it up in Home Depot stores is Rust-Oleum Corp. and their product was Restore. Restore was sold as a liquid armor coating that could be applied to wooden decks or room-swept concrete surfaces. According to a recent class action lawsuit though, Restore did not act as the protective coating it was advertised to be. Instead, the product allegedly peeled off surfaces, leaving them exposed.

The lawsuit was filed by Ulbardo Fernandez, who purchased the product at Home Depot. He alleges that Restore was advertised as being a “smart alternative” to replacing decks and concrete. Fernandez allegedly decided to purchase Restore as a result of the advertisement he saw for it in Home Depot. Continue reading ›