This looks like one of those “I’m-not-a-lawyer-but-this-looks-like-something-you-should-be-aware-of-because-it-could-be-relevant-to-collections” type of rulings. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has overturned a lower court’s dismissal of a suit accusing a retailer of violating the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act and the Illinois Deceptive Trade Practices Act on the grounds of what constitutes “reasonable consumer behavior” which, to me, sounds eerily similar to the “least sophisticated consumer.”
The Background: The plaintiff, an Ohio resident, filed the lawsuit after discovering discrepancies between the shelf prices and the prices charged at the register during a shopping trip to one of the defendant’s stores in Illinois. The plaintiff claimed that the defendant’s inaccurate shelf prices led to overcharges on six out of fifteen items purchased, amounting to nearly 7% of the pretax total bill. The plaintiff’s counsel further investigated and found similar pricing discrepancies in Walmart stores across several states, including Florida, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York.
- A District Court judge dismissed the case, ruling that since the defendant provided receipts showing the actual prices charged, there was no deception as consumers could compare the receipt prices to the shelf prices.
The Ruling: Who actually pays attention to what appears on the register when items are scanned at a checkout, the Appeals Court pondered.
“Even if shoppers somehow retain records of each shelf price, at checkout, many are trying to corral young children, others are skimming the tabloid headlines displayed to entice them, and still others are lending a hand to the baggers or pulling out their wallets,” the Appeals Court wrote. “Shoppers can easily miss the split-second display of a price or two at checkout. Even if consumers do notice a price discrepancy on a point-of-sale display or on a receipt, they must then raise the issue to the store’s attention to resolve it. It is reasonable to infer that many consumers in that situation would be concerned about holding up the six shoppers in line behind them, reluctant to trouble a busy store manager over a few pennies per item, or unable to spare the time to track that manager down.”
- The court emphasized that the reasonable consumer standard requires considering how real consumers, not hypothetical perfectly rational beings, behave in the marketplace.
