8-9 CUTPA
8-9:1 Applicability to Lawyers
The operative provision of the Connecticut Unfair Practices Act ("CUTPA")155 provides that "no person shall engage in unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce." CUTPA "provides a remedy for a person who has sustained an ascertainable loss as a result of conduct that is immoral, unethical, oppressive or unscrupulous."156
[I]n determining whether a practice violates CUTPA [the Supreme Court has] adopted the criteria set out in the cigarette rule by the federal trade commission for determining whether a practice is unfair: (1) [W]hether the practice, without necessarily having been previously considered unlawful, offends public policy as it has been established by statutes, the common law, or otherwise . . . (2) whether it is immoral, unethical, oppressive, or unscrupulous; (3) whether it causes substantial injury to consumers, [competitors or other businesspersons] . . . All three criteria do not need to be satisfied to support a finding of unfairness. A practice may be unfair because of the degree to which it meets one of the criteria or because to a lesser extent it meets all three.157
Although the Supreme Court did bring the field of law within the realm of CUTPA, it also explicitly held that "professional negligence—that is, malpractice—does not fall under CUTPA."158 "Our CUTPA cases illustrate that the most significant question in considering a CUTPA claim against an attorney is whether the allegedly improper conduct is part of the attorney's professional representation of a client or is part of the entrepreneurial aspect of practicing law."159 The entrepreneurial aspect of practicing law involves "the solicitation of business and billing practices, as opposed to claims directed at the competence of and...
