Hunton Retail Law Resource

This past week, several consumer actions made headlines that affect the retail industry.

Nectar Brand to Put Its “Made in America” Claims to Bed

Nectar Brand LLC has agreed to stop making unqualified claims that its mattresses were made in the United States. According to the FTC’s complaint, Nectar Brand sells mattresses under several brand names, including Nectar Sleep, DreamCloud LLC and DreamCloud Brand LLC. Nectar Brand’s ads and product labeling included statements that the products were “Designed and Assembled in USA.” In fact, the FTC alleged that the mattresses all are imported from China and that Nectar Brand has no assembly operations in the U.S.

Under the settlement terms, Nectar Brand is prohibited from representing that its products are made in the United States unless it can substantiate its claims. Further, Nectar Brand’s officers are prohibited from misrepresenting the country of origin of its products.

In June, new laws will go into effect that restrict employers’ ability to request and use criminal history information about applicants in three jurisdictions: Kansas City, Missouri; the State of Washington; and the city of Spokane, Washington. Below are summaries of the new restrictions and links to the laws.

As reported on the Hunton Privacy & Information Security Law Blog, on March 8, 2018, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (“Ninth Circuit”) reversed a decision from the United States District Court for the District of Nevada. The trial court found that one subclass of plaintiffs in In re Zappos.Com, Inc. Customer Data Security Breach Litigation had not sufficiently alleged injury in fact to establish Article III standing. The opinion focused on consumers who did not allege that any fraudulent charges had been made using their identities, despite hackers accessing their names, account numbers, passwords, email addresses, billing and shipping addresses, telephone numbers, and credit and debit card information in a 2012 data breach. 

As reported on the Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives blog, say an employee slips $20 from the register and even admits to it when you show the camera footage. Or, more innocently, say an employee is overpaid $20 entirely by accident. If the employee refuses to give it back, should you deduct the $20 from the employee’s paycheck?

From the outset it was clear that Mr. Mulvaney’s tenure as acting director of the CFPB would be a political flashpoint. His contentious appointment set the stage for a potential sea change in the agency’s enforcement and rulemaking agenda. Many anticipated that the former South Carolina congressman and current director of the Office of Management and Budget would completely overhaul the CFPB. After only three months on the job, Acting Director Mulvaney has already made several moves indicative of his intent to temper the aggressive stances taken by his predecessor, Richard ...

This past week, several consumer actions made headlines that affect the retail industry.

FTC v. AT&T Mobility: “Good News for Consumers” Per FTC Chairman

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rules en banc in FTC v. AT&T Mobility, LLC, that the FTC could challenge AT&T’s broadband data throttling practices, despite the fact that AT&T is a “common carrier” subject to exemption under the FTC Act. The court ruled that the common carrier exemption was activity-based rather than status-based. Therefore, the FTC may challenge a carrier’s non-carriage unfair or deceptive acts or practices. Simply put, “a phone company is no longer just a phone company. The transformation of information services and the ubiquity of digital technology means that telecommunications operators have expanded into website operation, video distribution, news and entertainment production, interactive entertainment services and devices, home security and more.” Acting FTC Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen issued a statement praising the Ninth Circuit’s decision as “good news for consumers.”

At the end of February, the SEC staff issued a No-Action Letter to Dunkin’ Brands Group, Inc., permitting the company to exclude a shareholder proposal under Rule 14a-8(i)(5), often referred to as the economic relevance exception. This is the first no-action relief granted under the rule since the SEC issued Staff Legal Bulletin No. 14I (“SLB 14I”) on November 1, 2017, and it could have implications for other retailers seeking to exclude shareholder proposals under the rule in the future.

Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, sitting en banc, became the second federal appellate court to officially recognize a discrimination claim under Title VII based solely on the plaintiff’s sexual orientation. The Court’s decision in Zarda v. Altitude Express follows on the heels of the Seventh Circuit’s decision last April in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, in which the Seventh Circuit also overturned its prior cases to recognize protections based on sexual orientation under Title VII.

Bitcoin has received considerable media attention in recent months as its value soared to $20,000 in December 2017, then retreated to around $9,000 in February 2018, fueling growing speculation regarding its future. While some investors embrace bitcoin, many members of the general public struggle to understand it. And despite the interest in cryptocurrency by investors, as evidenced by the high market value of bitcoin (even after the recent drop in value), very few retailers and merchants accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment. Retailers and merchants appear to (wisely) be ...

The CPSC has flexed its regulatory muscle during the first months of 2018 with respect to products that pose risks to children. With the U.S. Department of Justice’s (“DOJ’s”) help, the CPSC secured a $5 million civil penalty against a drug company for its allegedly deficient child-resistant packaging. In December, the DOJ filed a complaint in federal court against the drug company alleging that it knowingly violated the Poison Prevention Packaging Act and the Consumer Product Safety Act by distributing five household prescription drugs with non-compliant child-resistant packaging and failing to report the noncompliance to the CPSC. The complaint alleges that the drug company’s engineers drafted a “risk analysis” memo identifying the packaging as non-compliant. Rather than halt distribution and immediately report the non-compliance to the CPSC, the drug company continued distribution with non-compliant packaging while concurrently developing compliant packaging. The company also waited nearly 15 months before notifying the CPSC of its non-compliant packaging. In January, the federal court entered a consent decree for the matter. The drug company agreed to pay a $5 million civil penalty, implement and maintain a compliance program, and maintain and enforce a system of internal controls and procedures.