Almost everyone approaching the U.S. consumer market has heard nightmares about lawsuits and read damaging headlines from consumer claims.  These range from industry wide antitrust investigations to criminal indictments for racketeering to class actions for deceptive advertising.  In May this year, U.S., Canadian and Mexican government officials met to discuss cooperation in enforcing antitrust laws in an increasingly global market place, suggesting even greater cooperative activity in the antitrust arena relating to global markets.  It was recently announced that Uber is under investigation in China and in May this year, it was announced that Facebook was being investigated in Germany.  Although such global antitrust inquiries are not exclusive to the U.S. market, it is clear that no companies are exempt and the U.S. takes such matters seriously.  Similarly, people around the world read about the U.S. efforts last year to indict Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) officials on racketeering charges, making it clear that even non-commercial entities are not immune from racketeering charges.  And earlier this month, L’Oréal was sued for hundreds of millions of dollars due to alleged misrepresentation about a product it sold that promised “fuller, silkier hair” which instead was alleged to cause hair loss.

Our next installment of our Resource for Doing Business in the U.S. provides an introduction to Consumer Protection laws in the U.S. It aims to equip our readers with a basic understanding of the types of consumer protect claims a business might face, and it explains some of the state and federal laws that form the basis of such claims.