Michael A. Munoz

Subscribe to Michael A. Munoz's Posts
Contact: Read more about Michael A. Munoz

On July 21, 2021, and in response to President Biden’s Executive Order calling on the FTC to address repair restrictions, the FTC unanimously adopted the Right to Repair Policy Statement related to manufacturer and seller restrictions to product repairs. In the policy statement, the FTC announced its plans to prioritize enforcement against unlawful repair restrictions, including promoting possible updates to state and federal legislation. Manufacturers and sellers should ensure compliance with current consumer protection and antitrust laws and monitor potential rulemaking, a path the FTC is careening toward.

The FTC expressed concern that repair restrictions make it more difficult for competitors, local businesses, and consumers to repair products. In a May 2021 report to Congress, Nixing the Fix: An FTC Report to Congress on Repair Restrictions, the FTC detailed manufacturer-created restrictions, including limiting the availability of parts, software, and telematics information and access to authorized repair networks; designing products to make self-repairs less safe; asserting trademark and patent rights in an overbroad manner; and implementing restrictive end-user license agreements and software locks. The FTC also warned that repair restrictions drive up repair costs, repair wait times, and electronic waste; reduce competition; and have an especially large impact on communities of color and lower-income Americans.…

Continue Reading FTC Turns Focus to Repair Restrictions in New Policy Statement

With a new leader at the Federal Trade Commission comes new rules of practice. Chair Lina Kahn convened a first-of-its-kind open Commission meeting, allowing for live public comments following the meeting. In addition to issuing the Made in the USA Final Rule at the meeting, the FTC revised the procedures for issuing Magnuson-Moss Rules. This carries out Commissioner Chopra and now-Chair Khan’s call for more rulemaking, and the next step to former Chair Slaughter’s creation of a rulemaking group within the Commission. The changes concentrate the rulemaking process in the Chair’s office and strip away many of the procedures that helped lead to rules based on bipartisan consensus among the commissioners and support from FTC staff.

By way of background, to pass a rule under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Federal Trade Commission Improvements Act (“Mag-Moss”), the FTC must: (1)  make a finding that the conduct at issue is “prevalent” and (2) conduct informal hearings allowing interested parties to cross-examine those making oral presentations. The FTC appears interested in applying Mag-Moss rulemaking in both the competition and consumer protection contexts.  Though Mag-Moss has statutory requirements that the FTC must follow, such as publishing a notice of proposed rulemaking, allowing public comment from interested persons, providing the opportunity for informal hearings, and promulgating rules based on the final record, the FTC has enacted procedural rules to carry out these statutory requirements.…

Continue Reading New Changes at the FTC: Return of the Rulemaking

Following the Supreme Court’s April ruling in AMG Capital Management that the FTC is not entitled to monetary relief under Section 13(b) of the FTC Act, the FTC has pivoted to other weapons in its enforcement arsenal to obtain monetary relief from those subject to enforcement actions.  The latest example is the FTC’s pursuit of civil penalties against a merchant cash advance provider.

The FTC initially sued RCG Advances, LLC and other defendants who provided merchant cash advances to small businesses in June 2020 for allegedly taking out withdrawals that exceeded the agreed-upon repayment amount.  Lacking the ability to obtain monetary relief after the AMG decision, the FTC got creative and amended its complaint, adding new statutory claims under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (the GLB Act).  Under the GLB Act, the FTC alleges that the defendants obtained customers’ financial information by making “false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement[s] or representation[s.]”  The FTC is empowered with enforcing the GLB Act—and dozens of other statutes, such the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act—as rule violations, meaning the FTC can seek consumer redress under Section 19 of the FTC Act and civil penalties.
Continue Reading Rolling with the Punches: The FTC Goes with Civil Penalties after AMG Capital Management Takes Away Section 13(b) Authority

On May 26, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an opinion in Cranor v. 5 Star Nutrition, LLC, holding that the receipt of a single text message is a sufficient injury to convey standing under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”). This creates a circuit split with the Eleventh Circuit’s 2019 opinion entered in Salcedo v. Hanna, which we previously blogged about.

Cranor made its way to the Fifth Circuit after the district court dismissed the case on grounds that a single text message doesn’t “involve [the same] intrusion into the privacy of the home” as a call to a residential landline. In its opinion, the Fifth Circuit looked to the (1) congressional purpose of the TCPA, and (2) traditional basis for actionable, intangible harm in holding that the receipt of a single text message constitutes an injury under the TCPA.…

Continue Reading Singled Out: One Text Message Conveys TCPA Standing in the Fifth Circuit

Earlier today, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in AMG Capital Management v. Federal Trade Commission, holding that Congress, by enacting Section 13(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act, did not grant the Commission authority to obtain equitable monetary relief when it proceeds in federal district courts under that section.

Specifically, Section 13(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act gives the Commission authority to bring suit in federal district court against those it believes are “violating” or “about to violate” the FTC Act, in order to “enjoin any such act or practice.” In such cases, Section 13(b) further provides courts with the authority to issue a “permanent injunction.” Since the late 1970s, the FTC has taken the position, accepted by courts, that this grant of authority included the ability to obtain equitable monetary relief. The Supreme Court today said not so.

In reaching its conclusion, the Court first looked to the plain language of 13(b). It recognized that the statute only allows for injunctions. The Court stated, plainly, that “an injunction is not the same as an award of equitable monetary relief.”…

Continue Reading Disgorgement [Supremely] Denied: Supreme Court Unanimously Curtails the FTC’s Authority in AMG Capital Management v. FTC

Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued a 9-0 unanimous decision authored by Justice Sotomayor (with Justice Alito writing a concurring opinion) in Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, resolving the circuit split on what constitutes a prohibited “automatic telephone dialing system” (more often referred to as an “autodialer” or “ATDS”) and adopting a narrow definition of ATDS. Yesterday’s ruling likely provides welcome relief to those subject to the TCPA—at least for the time being. More on that below.

Specifically, the Court favored the Third, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits’ autodialer definitions and held that, in order to be an ATDS, “a device must have the capacity either to store a telephone number using a random or sequential generator or to produce a telephone number using a random or sequential number generator.” In other words, a telephone number must essentially be pulled out of thin air and then called or texted; that is what “random or sequential” number generation means. That type of technology was commonly used in the early 1990s when the TCPA was enacted, but virtually no one uses it anymore. Now, companies typically dial from stored lists of specific telephone numbers. The Supreme Court’s concern was that, if it accepted the alternative ATDS definition—that dialing from a cultivated list of telephone numbers constitutes autodialing—such interpretation “would capture virtually all modern cell phones . . . The TCPA’s liability provisions, then, could affect ordinary cell phone owners in the course of commonplace usage, such as speed dialing or sending automated text message responses.” Notably, during oral argument last December, Justice Sotomayor foreshadowed her and the other justices’ doubts in questioning to Bryan Garner, Duguid’s counsel:…

Continue Reading Message Received: Supreme Court Narrowly Construes Autodialer Definition

For those who follow the Federal Trade Commission and are anxiously awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision in AMG Capital Management v. FTC, several recent developments at the Commission may foreshadow the enforcement road that lies ahead. In many ways, the future may look a lot like the past, especially the 1960s and 1970s, when the FTC pumped out rules regulating many aspects of economic activity, including frosted cocktail glasses.

First, earlier this month, President Biden nominated Lina Khan, an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School, to replace departing Commissioner Rohit Chopra, who has been nominated to lead the CFPB. At 32 years of age, Khan would be the youngest FTC commissioner in the agency’s history.…

Continue Reading Setting Some Ground Rules: Commissioner Nominee and a New Working Group May Steer the FTC Down a New (Actually an Old) Road

At the end of last month, FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra and his attorney advisor, Samuel Levine, penned an article, “The Case for Resurrecting the FTC Act’s Penalty Offense Authority.” In the article, the authors posit that, because the FTC’s “ability to seek monetary relief through Section 13(b) is now in jeopardy,” the FTC should “resurrect one of the key authorities it abandoned in the 1980s”—the Penalty Offense Authority under Section 5(m)(1)(b) of the FTC Act. The authors argue that dusting off the FTC’s Penalty Offense Authority would “mitigate the ongoing gamesmanship around Section 13(b), showing the marketplace that the FTC has more than one trick up its sleeve.” Indeed, Commissioner Chopra’s laser focus on mitigating the potential impact of the Supreme Court’s forthcoming decision in FTC v. AMG Capital Management was on display twice last month, as we previously discussed. In related news, all five FTC commissioners recently asked Congress to “clarify” the FTC’s authority under Section 13(b) in light of the Shire, Credit Bureau Center, and AbbVie decisions.

So, what is the FTC’s Penalty Offense Authority? The FTC’s rarely used Penalty Offense Authority authorizes the FTC to seek civil penalties against a defendant in federal court where (1) the FTC has obtained a litigated cease and desist order against another party through an administrative proceeding pursuant to Section 5(b) of the FTC Act; (2) the cease and desist order identifies a specific practice as unfair or deceptive; and (3) a party on notice of the order (i.e., someone with actual knowledge that the practice is unfair or deceptive) then engages in that same violating conduct after the order is final.…

Continue Reading FTC Commissioner Seeks to Resurrect Penalty Offense Authority

A case about golf and advertising was too good for us not to write about. Recently, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California issued a tentative preliminary injunction against GolfzonDeca, Inc. for marketing its GolfBuddy rangefinder. For you non-golfers, a rangefinder is a device that tells a golfer how far they are from the hole or other point on the course.[1] Golfers continually strive for equipment that might help them lower their scores, and we are reminded of the prescient equipment tip from Arnold Palmer: “I have a tip that can take five strokes off anyone’s game. It’s called an eraser.” Plaintiff SkyHawke Technologies, LLC brought several Lanham Act claims alleging misrepresentations with respect to (1) the source of GolfBuddy’s GPS data and (2) the GolfBuddy’s accuracy. As a competitor in the rangefinder marketplace, SkyHawke contended that it was entitled to a preliminary injunction with respect to these false statements.
Continue Reading Getting the Yardage: District Court Locks in on Rangefinder Company’s False Claims

Yesterday, the Third Circuit issued an opinion in Federal Trade Commission v. AbbVie, Inc., joining the Seventh Circuit in holding that the FTC is not entitled to seek disgorgement under Section 13(b) of the FTC Act. The decision reflects a potential turning of the tides on how courts view FTC’s statutory authority to seek monetary relief.

By way of background, the district court ordered the AbbVie defendants to disgorge $448 million in alleged ill-gotten profits from anticompetitive conduct regarding the patented drug AndroGel. Though the Third Circuit held that the district court properly concluded that AbbVie had monopoly power in the relevant market, it struck down the $448 million award.…

Continue Reading Disgorgement Denied: Third Circuit Hands FTC a Tough Pill to Swallow Over Section 13(b) Authority