Hunton Retail Law Resource

The FTC announced a settlement with Cycra, Inc., a manufacturer of motocross and ATV parts, and the company’s owner for falsely claiming their products were made in the USA while importing parts from Asia and Europe. The proposed consent order imposes an $872,577 judgment and requires the respondents to comply with the FTC’s requirements for marketing products as made or assembled in the United States.

Nearly 700 companies (670 to be exact) are recipients of a letter from the Federal Trade Commission, putting the companies on formal notice that failing to have proper substantiation for health claims (the Substantiation Notice) or engaging in misleading use of testimonials or endorsements (the Endorsement Notice) could result in civil penalties.

As our nation transitions into a “post-pandemic world,” consumers are now more than ever looking for new and convenient ways to get quality healthcare services. So much so that a 2020 survey conducted by ICSC[1], a trade group of retail property owners, found that almost 7 out of 10 adults visit a healthcare provider in a shopping center or outdoor strip mall. The movement coined as “medtail” is a growing trend across the nation where healthcare providers are moving from the large traditional community hospitals into more convenient retail spaces. The rise of medtail, coupled with the growth of online shopping and the ever decreasing need for brick and mortar retail locations, has many landlords now considering healthcare service providers as tenants in their retail location. Adding healthcare services to a retail center provides many benefits, but landlords should keep these few things in mind as they look to repurpose their traditional retail space.

It has been two years since the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 141 S. Ct. 1017 (2021), holding that Ford could be subject to personal jurisdiction in Minnesota and Montana because the suit “related to” the company’s contacts with the states, even though there was not a causal relationship between Ford’s contacts with the forum and plaintiffs’ claims. The Court’s ruling clarified its decisions in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Ct. of California, San Francisco Cnty., 137 S. Ct. 1773, 1780 (2017) and Daimler AG v. Bauman, 134 S. Ct. 746, 749 (2014), which held that for state courts to exercise specific jurisdiction, the suit must “arise out of or relate to the defendant’s contacts with the forum.” As Justice Kagan explained, “[t]he first half of that standard asks about causation; but the back half, after the ‘or,' contemplates that some relationships will support jurisdiction without a causal showing.” Ford at 1026. Because claimants alleged a defective Ford vehicle caused the crashes and harm at issue, and “Ford had systematically served a market in Montana and Minnesota for the very vehicles that the plaintiffs allege malfunctioned and injured them in those States,” there was a strong “relationship among the defendant, the forum, and the litigation” such that Ford could be subject to personal jurisdiction in those states. Id. at 1028.