Unfair Business Practices

Unfair Business Practices include any unlawful, fraudulent unfair business act or practice and/or false, misleading or deceptive advertising as prohibited by Chapter 1 of Part 3 of Division 7 of the California Business and Professions Code. Examples of unfair business practices are conspiring to fix market prices, price discrimination, conspiring to boycott, conspiring to allocate markets and/or monopolization. The California Business and Professions Code protects consumers against false, misleading or deceptive advertising by prohibiting “the dissemination in any advertising media of any statement concerning real or personal property offered for sale which is untrue or misleading, and which is known, or which by the exercise of reasonable care should be known, to be untrue or misleading.” The legislation to protect consumers states that any member of the public is permitted to sue on his or her own behalf or of the behalf on the public generally in cases where these rules are violated. Violations of unfair business practices require only “that members of the public are likely to be deceived.” Please note that violations of unfair business practices laws can be shown even if no one was actually deceived or sustained any real damage. Lawsuits can be filed if and only if the public is given misleading information leading them to be “likely to be deceived.