According to UCL Practitioner,
the lion’s share—at least 75%—involved disputes between businesses, in which one business sued another for a UCL violation. Most of the cases involved intellectual property or antitrust disputes. I thought this was quite interesting given the fact that most people, including lawyers, seem to think that UCL claims are filed mainly by consumers against businesses. The supporters of Proposition 64 have tried to perpetuate that notion, saying things like “each year thousands of California’s small businesses become victims” of “frivolous” UCL filings. It would be interesting to survey the UCL claims filed in state court to see whether that is true and whether, as seems to be the case in federal court, most UCL claims are actually filed by business entities against their competitors.
But this argument is a non sequitur. Sure, many or most UCL filings are attempts by some corporations to essentially steal from their competitors, or use the law to bludgeon each other rather than competing fairly. But that doesn’t mean that thousands of small businesses are not victims of frivolous 17200 cases. Nor does putting quote marks around the word frivolous make it so that there aren’t thousands of frivolous cases against businesses filed either by individuals or by other businesses which drive up costs for consumers, benefit lawyers without any public benefit, and turn the courts into a scramble for someone else’s money. Finally, Prop. 64 only says that people filing 17200 cases must show some actual personal harm by the thing they’re complaining about. Businesses suing for antitrust violations would still be able to do so if they can show that they’ve been injured, and people who have been harmed by unfair business practices would still be able to sue under 17200.
UCL Practitioner seems to be saying that we ought to allow people to sue under 17200 without any personal harm, because evil greedy corporations use the law against each other for antitrust violations. But that makes no sense.
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