In this lawsuit the Court of Appeals, Justice Fahey dissenting in part, observed that for several consecutive years, the Plaintiffs bought the annual edition of a legal resource manual published and sold by the Defendant.
The main issue in this appeal was whether Plaintiffs' complaint adequately pleaded a deceptive act or practice prohibited by General Business Law §349 [GBL §349] based on Defendant's alleged misrepresentations about the completeness of the laws reproduced in one section of its publication.
Although Defendant's acts are consumer-oriented*, the Court of Appeals concluded that the Defendant's acts were not materially misleading. Contrary to Plaintiffs' argument, the court opined that "a consumer acting reasonably under the circumstances here would not have believed that [Defendant] represented that the section at issue, containing rent control statutes and regulations, was current and accurate for its one-year shelf life."
In sum, said the court, Plaintiffs' "cause of action is based on purchases of yearly editions of the [publication] under a sales agreement that charged extra for any updates of the year's materials contained in the corresponding edition."
Observing that Plaintiffs' allegations "were limited to omissions and inaccuracies in a section of the [publication] they knew was subject to legislative amendment, which they concede were corrected in the 2017 edition after the errors were brought to defendant's attention, and which were specifically contemplated by defendant's express disclaimer of the currentness of the [publication's] contents", the Court of Appeals concluded that "[under] the circumstances, plaintiffs, or any reasonable consumer, could not have been materially misled to believe that defendant guaranteed Part III of the [publication] was complete and accurate at any given time."
As the Plaintiffs failed to adequately plead this element, the Court of Appeals held that "their GBL §349 cause of action was properly dismissed."
* The alleged misrepresentations were contained in a manual that was then marketed to and available for purchase by consumers.
Click HERE to access the Court of Appeals' decision.