Consumer Law

UDAP Statutes Used Against Books

By Jeff Sovern

by Jeff Sovern

Kevin Jon Heller of the Opinio Juris blog has a post about the troublesome practice of using UDAP statutes against book authors and publishers in connection with the content of their books.  Heller writes about the suit against former President Jimmy Carter and the publisher of his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid for, according to the plaintiffs, publishing inaccurate information about Israel.  This strikes me as a perversion of deceptive trade practices statutes which are intended to prevent deceptive speech in selling products, rather than claims in books.  It obviously also raises First Amendment issues; UDAP statutes are constitutional because states can regulate commercial speech within boundaries, but this speech is not commercial.  The appropriate response to inaccuracies in books is more speech, not a UDAP claim.  (HT: Charles Bobis)

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on February 27, 2011 (boomark / email).