The relationship between buyers and sellers relies on transactions happening in good faith. As a buyer, you meet this expectation when you pay the price for a product. Unfortunately, sellers often fail to operate to the same standard. Companies too often abuse consumer good faith by advertising falsely, including fraudulent charges, and obscuring facts about their products. This fraudulent behavior is intentionally designed to be difficult to recognize. While you may feel frustrated if you have suffered damages from these tactics, you may also doubt that you have legal options to hold these deceitful sellers accountable. The Los Angeles consumer fraud attorneys at Arias Sanguinetti have over 300 years of combined experience and are highly skilled at litigating against businesses who take advantage of their consumers. Together, we can hold fraudulent businesses accountable.
Consumer fraud often exists in minutia, resulting in relatively small financial damages for defrauded consumers. This can create the impression that it is a nearly harmless crime. In reality, consumer fraud commonly affects millions of people. When these consumer losses are considered altogether, what once may have looked like a negligible instance of fraud can be understood as a massive violation of consumer rights. At Arias Sanguinetti, our dedicated team of Los Angeles consumer rights attorneys specializes in addressing these violations through class actions, ensuring that every affected consumer receives the representation they deserve. Contact us today to learn more about your legal options to secure financial compensation for an instance of consumer fraud.
What is false advertising?
Consumer fraud occurs when a vendor engages in deceptive practices that lead to financial or other losses for consumers in the course of seemingly legitimate business transactions. More often than not, consumer fraud takes the shape of false advertising. False advertising is a complex concept that can include many different varieties of consumer violations. Many people believe false advertising is restricted to overt lies about a product, such as Volkswagen’s infamous “Clean Diesel” campaign. In practice, false advertising can take many forms including, but not limited to:
- False pricing. While the vast majority of additional fees are completely legal, added fees without proper justification may be considered fraudulent under certain circumstances.
- Untrue claims. This is the most common case of false advertising. If a product or service is marketed as functioning in a way that it does not, that is fraud. For instance, our consumer fraud attorneys in Los Angeles filed a lawsuit against Toyota for inaccurately promoting a “hands-free” phone call feature that frequently resulted in disruptive echoing during calls.
- Falsified results. This occurs most often when body-care products digitally alter images of models to promote false results.
- False research. Advertisers may not make false claims of research, a standard most often violated by claims of “clinically proven” results.
- Bait and switch. Consumer fraud has occurred when a company attracts business with a low advertised price of a product, then redirects the consumer to a more expensive version of the same product while denying the opportunity to buy the initially advertised, lower-priced, product.
- Misleading pictures. A product may not appear significantly different than a photo used to advertise it.
- Always on sale. To be advertised as on sale, a product must have had a higher price within a certain time frame. In Los Angeles, this time frame is 3 months.
These examples of consumer fraud can lead to millions of dollars in damages. If you recognize any of these cases of false advertising as something that has affected you, you may be eligible for significant financial compensation. Even if the violation seems small, we recommend that you contact our Los Angeles consumer fraud attorneys today to learn if you have a claim.
How is false advertising stopped/prevented?
Fraudulent advertisers often act with impunity, trusting that they are unlikely to face a thorough investigation of their claims. Government entities have a limited capacity to regulate this behavior due largely to understaffing. As a result, false advertisers regularly get away with their fraudulent behavior.
Our dedicated Los Angeles consumer fraud attorneys believe that there must be accountability for these dishonest and illegal practices. Unfortunately, without notable government oversight, independent consumers and consumer fraud attorneys are the primary regulators of false advertisers. We take this responsibility seriously, and we are eager to partner with you to seek justice.
When you make the choice to pursue legal action against a fraudulent advertiser, you are not only fighting for your own rights, but also advocating for the numerous fellow consumers who have fallen victim to the same fraud. Contact us to get started today.
What is a class action lawsuit?
In the vast majority of consumer fraud cases, victims suffer relatively small financial damages. In cases involving small damages, consumer fraud litigation is most effective when one person or a small group of people pursues a lawsuit on behalf of many people who have all suffered similar damages that all have the same cause. This group is known as a class, and a lawsuit seeking damages for all of their combined damages is a class action. Class actions can be extremely effective in securing significant compensation, as even the smallest improper service charge can turn into millions of dollars in damages when the full class is taken into account.
The original members of the lawsuit – the individuals choosing to pursue legal action – are known as the class representatives. The class representatives play a vital role in holding companies accountable – there can be no lawsuit without them. As such, class representatives usually are awarded additional compensation in any settlement reached for their courage and effort in representing the class.
If the class action results in financial compensation, members of the class will have a window of time to claim a portion of the damages. Often, it can be difficult to ascertain the final compensation per member of the class as it depends on how many class members file a claim.
Our Los Angeles consumer fraud attorneys are experts in pursuing class actions to compensate for fraudulent behavior on the part of vendors/companies. Contact us today to learn more about being a class representative and if you have experienced an instance of consumer fraud.