The common retail practice of comparing an item’s current price with a higher “original,” “regular,” or “MSRP” price has recently come under increasing fire from consumers, who say the higher comparison price is often fictitious and misleads shoppers into believing they are getting a better bargain than they really are. Over the past two and a half years, more than 50 putative class actions have been filed in courts across the country, seeking relief under state consumer protection statutes for purchases made in reliance on these allegedly misleading price comparisons.
Until recently, these class actions had been concentrated in California, where plaintiffs can take advantage of state statutes that do not require a consumer to show that they sustained an actual economic loss in order to state a claim. Under each of California’s three consumer protection statutes, plaintiffs sufficiently plead an injury so long as they allege they would not have made the purchase but for the misleading price comparison. Hinojos v. Kohl’s, 718 F.3d 1098, 1107 (9th Cir. 2013). That is, even if the items they...
