The marketing of products in a false or misleading way not only wastes public funds but deprives public entities and their resident taxpayers of the benefit of their bargain. The purchaser – be it a state, city, or county, a fire department, a utility, or a school district – doesn’t receive the product they paid for and thought they were buying. Our mission is to reverse these wrongs and restore those funds.
Other unique consumer protection concerns are raised when a company creates and distributes a product that is either intended and designed to addict users or leads to addiction as a byproduct of its use. Additional public harm arises from the costs of abating this market misconduct, for example, through treatment programs to protect and restore the public health—as in the case of opioids, e-cigarettes marketed to youths, and deficiently designed digital products, from social media platforms to online game platforms.
What we See on the Horizon
A Hyper-Competitive Consumer Marketplace
- Continuing incentives by product manufacturers and merchants to overstate the benefits of their products or downplay the risks
- Consumers induced to choose their products
- Dangerous safety risks pushed into the marketplace—especially when companies rush to be first to market, often foregoing adequate safety testing
- Consumers getting hurt, killed—or, at the very least, just not getting what they paid for
Expanding notions of products designed to encourage addiction
- Opioid litigation playbook likely spilling into other addictive/over-prescribed classes of drugs (weight-loss injectables, psychiatric meds)
- And it’s not only drugs—similar principles and playbook extending to other products and technologies, such as social media, online video games and AI
The Reasons Plaintiffs Hire Us
Attorneys General and local government consumer protection authorities hire us to partner with them as they pursue accountability and compensation for fraudulent misrepresentation, marketing, and even intentionally dangerous design of consumer goods and services.
Our approach is sophisticated and systematic. Because we work closely with state and local consumer protection enforcement authorities across the country, we understand the problems that misleading and deceptive marketing practices cause for governments and the public alike. When government agencies are spending critical public dollars on necessary goods and services that have been falsely promoted, that don’t do what they claim to do or that introduce new and undisclosed safety hazards, enforcement is essential to protect the public and restore ill-gotten gains. We proudly pioneer groundbreaking legal theories, carving out new legal claims and paths to recovery for our public entity partners on consumer protection matters.
- With a widening enforcement deficit, it is increasingly important for state and local governments to flex their consumer protection muscle. G&E helps to maximize the success of these efforts.
- We take the concept of partnership with public entities seriously: we assist and advise but our public partners lead.
