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Consumer Fraud Defense
Consumer fraud statutes in every state punish businesses for false or fraudulent advertising, marketing, and sales of products to the public. Consumers may claim actual damages as well as attorney’s fees, and some states even double or triple the actual damages if the plaintiff can produce evidence of malicious intent on the part of a defendant. If your business is facing a lawsuit for alleged consumer fraud, you need an experienced team of business and commercial litigation attorneys to defend your interests. Our Chicago consumer fraud defense lawyers represent businesses in individual and class action suits involving allegations of consumer fraud, business fraud, insurance fraud, and credit card fraud.
Bringing a Consumer Fraud Case Ford Dealership Pays for its Consumer Fraud
Transcript:
| Yeah, we represented a nice young man who had been cheated. He didn’t have a lot of money, and he bought a used Taurus for $18,000. He had been assured by one of the largest Ford dealers in the country that it had never been in an accident. After purchasing the car, he found out that it was actually a rebuilt wreck. He got a Carfax report showing that it had been in a serious accident. We hired an expert who confirmed that there was frame damage. We went to trial and argued that, instead of being treated as he expected, he had been completely betrayed. He had trusted this dealer–he had even bought a car from them in the past. He believed that, as a large, reputable new car dealership, they would be honest with him. Instead, he was treated as if he had bought a car from a small used car lot on Western Avenue. We presented our case via Zoom arbitration because this was during COVID. The arbitrator awarded him $10,000 in actual damages, $10,000 for aggravation and inconvenience, $60,000 in punitive damages, and all of our attorney’s fees. |
Consumer Fraud Statutes
The Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act (CFDBPA) covers business-to-consumer transactions and transactions between businesses. It generally penalizes vendors who make deceptive statements or representations in order to induce someone to make a purchase. The statute defines “deceptive” through an extensive list of acts or practices, giving the word a very broad scope. It incorporates the list of prohibited “deceptive trade practices” in the Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act (UDTPA), which includes:
- Creating likelihood of confusion regarding attributes of goods or services, such as their source or sponsorship;
- Misrepresenting the geographic origin of a good or service;
- Claiming that used or reconditioned goods are new;
- False or misleading descriptions of a good’s quality;
- Misleading statements intended to disparage the goods or services of another; or
- Providing misleading explanations for reductions in a good’s price.
The CFDBPA also addresses pyramid schemes, “chain referrals sales techniques,” personal services, representations regarding the quality of food and other products, and a range of transactions involving used or secondhand goods. It has extensive regulations on the use of consumers’ personal information and communications with credit agencies and other third parties. It requires businesses that transact business primarily through the mail to disclose the physical address where it conducts business.
Consumers may bring complaints of alleged deceptive practices to the Attorney General, who may pursue injunctive and other relief against the business. Consumers who file suit for damages may recover actual and, in some circumstances, punitive damages.
Transcript:
| So, the Consumer Fraud is one of the areas that we’ve been involved in, both in class actions and individual cases, both prosecuting cases and defending businesses in Consumer Fraud cases. One interesting case that we recently did was for one of the largest diamond wholesalers in the world. They got sued in a consumer fraud case here by a lawyer who, as part of his strategy, went to publicize the case in the newspapers, and he printed the whole lawsuit in the newspapers. So, we flipped that around on him, and we sued him and his client–or his client–for libel in federal court. Suddenly, this case, where our client was being humiliated in the lawsuit, turned around, and they had to drop the whole lawsuit after we flipped it on them and sued them for defaming our client about this case. And we were able also to show that almost all the facts in the case were not true and received an apology letter from the plaintiff as the exclamation point to end the case. We also represent, for years, in both class actions and individual cases, consumers who have been cheated. One area we specialize in is suing car dealers who might sell flooded vehicles and rebuilt wrecks to consumers. This summer, we just did an arbitration–a lot of the car dealership cases are by arbitration–via Zoom. We were able to get a client who had been cheated $10,000 by a Ford dealer on a used Ford. We were able to get him not only all his money back, the $110,000 he was cheated–that was the overcharge on the car–but also $10,000 for aggravation and inconvenience, $60,000 in punitive damages, and then all our attorney’s fees. And it’s because we have so many years of experience and know so much about the car business and Consumer Fraud that we were able to achieve a result like that. |
Consumer Fraud and Identity Theft: Facts and Figures
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) compiles an annual report on consumer fraud complaints. It states that 2012 was the first year in which it received more than two million consumer complaints. Identity theft was the largest single category of complaint. Its top ten categories were:
| Identity Theft | 18 percent |
| Debt collection | 10 percent |
| Banks and Lenders | 6 percent |
| Shop-at-Home and Catalog Sales | 6 percent |
| Prizes, Sweepstakes and Lotteries | 5 percent |
| Impostor Scams | 4 percent |
| Internet Services | 4 percent |
| Auto-Related Complaints | 4 percent |
| Telephone and Mobile Services | 4 percent |
| Credit Cards | 3 percent |
Based in the Chicago area, our consumer fraud defense attorneys have defended many different types of businesses in a large number of different types of consumer fraud cases including banks, new and used car dealers, landlords that own large apartment complexes and a host of other different businesses. Because we have had an active practice prosecuting consumer fraud cases for over 30 years, we bring a unique perspective to defending businesses in consumer fraud litigation. We spend a large amount of time understanding the nature of the businesses practices at issue and learning the facts of your case so that we can develop a comprehensive winning strategy that minimizes your costs and achieves an excellent result. We also review all of your business insurance policies and have a great deal of experience obtaining defense costs from your insurer and working to ensure that the carriers provide the agreed upon coverage for your business.
Lubin Austermuehle DiTommaso, PC’s Chicago consumer fraud defense attorneys have offices in Elmhurst and Chicago, Illinois. We represent clients throughout Illinois, including the Chicago metro area and DuPage County, as well as Indiana and Wisconsin. To schedule a consultation with a consumer fraud defense lawyer in Chicago, contact us via email, at 630-333-0333.