Litigation

Anyone know why Forge Consulting still perpetuates the lie that it "is the first major new structured settlement firm in more than a decade"?  This lie is perpetuated through advertising on its own web site and on the web sites of the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys and Georgia Trial Lawyers Association.

Each state has truth-in-advertising regulations

In Massachusetts, the statute is 940 CMR 6.03

Basic Requirements

(1)The responsibility for truthful and nondeceptive advertising rests with the seller. Sellers must be able to substantiate material representations made before such representations are disseminated. Sellers must maintain sufficient records pursuant to 940 CMR 6.14 to substantiate the representations made in their advertisements in order that such substantiation can be made available to the Attorney General upon request.

(2) Sellers shall not use advertisements which are untrue, misleading, deceptive, fraudulent, falsely disparaging of competitors, or insincere offers to sell.

(4) An unfair or deceptive representation may result not only from direct representations and the reasonable inferences they create, but from the seller's omitting or obscuring a material fact.

Forge Consulting was founded in 2003. Since 2003 the following firms were established

1. Atlas Settlements Group
2. IFS Corp.

IFS Corp owns EPS Settlements Group, Inc., Structured Financial Associates, Inc., Millennium Settlements and recently acquired The Mangelsdorf Companies. It's safe to say that IFS probably does multiples of the business that Forge Consulting does.

So unless Forge Consulting can truly substantiate that it is indeed "the first major structured settlement firm in more than the decade" that ended March 14, 2008 it should remove "the lie" from its website and all of its advertising. The firm has had ample notice of the lie. While it has removed other questionnable claims from its website , for some reason Forge Consulting is clinging to "the lie".

By their continued inaction, is the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Academy (MATA) and The Georgia Trial Lawyers Association condoning the business practice of a vendor who appears to be in violation of their state advertising statutes by allowing "the lie" to remain in the vendor's ad on its website? With respect to MATA, Is $25,000 plus the annual donation of a diamond the price of "looking the other way"?