Opinion ID: 4541789
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Deceptive Acts

Text: To plausibly state a Chapter 93A claim premised on a deceptive act, the plaintiff must allege (1) a deceptive act or practice on the part of the seller; (2) an injury or loss suffered by the consumer; and (3) a causal connection between the seller's deceptive act or practice and the consumer's injury. Casavant v. Norwegian Cruise Line, Ltd., 919 N.E.2d 165, 168-69 (Mass. App. Ct. 2009) (citing Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 93A, § 9). An act or practice is deceptive if it has the capacity to mislead consumers, acting reasonably under the circumstances, to act differently from the way they otherwise would have acted (i.e., to entice a reasonable consumer to purchase the product). Aspinall, 813 N.E.2d at 488. -20- The spectrum of liability for deceptive acts or practices spans from affirmative misrepresentations, see Carlson, 2015 WL 6453147, at , to certain kinds of nondisclosures, such as advertising [that] may consist of a half truth, or even may be true as a literal matter, but still create[s] an over–all misleading impression through failure to disclose material information, Aspinall, 813 N.E.2d at 487. A nondisclosure, or an omission, is the failure to 'disclose to another a fact that [one] knows may justifiably induce the other to act or refrain from acting in a business transaction . . . [if one] is under a duty to the other to exercise reasonable care to disclose the matter in question. Underwood v. Risman, 605 N.E.2d 832, 836 (Mass. 1993) (alteration in original) (quoting Restatement (Second) of Torts § 551 (1977)). Beyond its recognition in Aspinall of two specific kinds of deceptive omissions and its occasional echoing of Section 3.16(2)'s broad disclosure language (which, as we will explain, is less expansive than meets the eye), the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (SJC) has not squarely addressed whether a seller commits a deceptive act when omitting information at the point of sale concerning a product that is tangential to its fitness for use. Thus, pursuant to Chapter 93A's directive, we look to the FTC's interpretation of the FTC Act for guidance. -21- The FTC has addressed in detail whether and to what extent omissions constitute deceptive acts. Under the FTC framework, with which Massachusetts law substantially comports, see Aspinall, 813 N.E.2d at 488, deceptive acts consist of three elements: (1) there must be a representation, practice, or omission likely to mislead consumers; (2) the consumers must be interpreting the message reasonably under the circumstances; and (3) the misleading effects must be 'material,' that is likely to affect consumers' conduct or decision with regard to a product, Int'l Harvester, 104 F.T.C. at 1056. According to the FTC, omissions give rise to liability based on deception in two limited circumstances: (1) to tell only half the truth, and to omit the rest (e.g., where a seller fails to disclose qualifying information necessary to prevent one of his affirmative statements from creating a misleading impression); and (2) to simply remain silent, if [the seller] does so under circumstances that constitute an implied but false representation (e.g., where a misleading impression arise[s] from the physical appearance of the product, or from the circumstances of a specific transaction, or . . . based on ordinary consumer expectations as to the irreducible minimum performance standards of a particular class of good).11 Id. at 1057-58. An example of telling a half- 11 We note the FTC's explanation that this second category of -22- truth and omitting the rest would be advertising a product that allegedly cures baldness but failing to disclose that most baldness results from male heredity and cannot be treated. Id. at 1058 (citing Ward Labs. v. FTC, 276 F.2d 952 (2nd Cir. 1960); Keele Hair & Scalp Specialists, 55 F.T.C. 1840 (1959), aff'd, 275 F.2d 18 (5th Cir. 1960)). An example of creating a misleading impression through an omission would be presenting a product as new, even though it is actually used, without correcting the misimpression created, see id. (citing Olson Radio Corp., 60 F.T.C. 1758 (1962)), or omitting that a simulated-wood product was actually made of paper, id. (citing Haskelite Mfg. Corp., 33 F.T.C. 1212, 1216 (1941), aff'd, 127 F.2d 765 (7th Cir. 1942)). Chapter 93A also requires that we look at federal case law interpreting the FTC Act. In 2018 the Ninth Circuit described the limits of the omission theory, holding that SeaWorld's failure to disclose facts about the poor treatment of its orca whales was not an unfair or deceptive act because such treatment [did] not concern a central feature of the entertainment experience inherent to the purchase of SeaWorld tickets. Hall v. SeaWorld Entm't, Inc., 747 F. App'x 449, 453 (9th Cir. 2018); see also omissions is deceptive because it interferes with [t]he concept of reasonable fitness, which is the notion that offering a product for sale creates an implied representation that it is fit for the purposes for which it is sold. Int'l Harvester, 104 F.T.C. at 1058 & n.35. -23- F.T.C. v. Simeon Mgmt. Corp., 532 F.2d 708, 716 (9th Cir. 1976) ([N]o single advertisement could possibly include every fact relevant to the purchasing decision; nor is such comprehensiveness required . . . .). Although the SJC did not cite directly to International Harvester in the Aspinall decision, its statement in that case regarding nondisclosures in advertising that are half truth[s] or that create an over-all misleading impression closely tracks the FTC's dual classification scheme. Aspinall, 813 N.E.2d at 487. In International Harvester, the FTC considered whether a farming equipment manufacturer committed a deceptive act by marketing a gasoline-powered tractor without a warning about a potentially dangerous product feature that resulted in a phenomenon called fuel geysering in which hot gasoline is forcibly ejected through a cap on the tractor's gas tank. See 104 F.T.C. at 1051-55. The FTC classified this nondisclosure as a pure omission, which it defined as merely staying silent about a subject in circumstances that do not give any particular meaning to [the] silence. Id. at 1059. Because the statistical probability of fuel geysering was very low, the FTC determined that the risk of hazard did not render the tractor unfit for normal use, and thus the act of offering the tractor for sale while staying silent about the risk of fuel geysering did not -24- constitute a deceptive act. Id. at 1063. Thus, although pure omissions may lead to erroneous consumer beliefs if [the] consumer had a false, pre-existing conception which the seller failed to correct, the FTC held that such omissions, by and large, are not appropriately characterized as deceptive or reached through deception analysis. Id. at 1059-60. The reasoning underlying the FTC's treatment of pure omissions is encapsulated in the following policy considerations: First, we could not declare pure omissions to be deceptive without expanding that concept virtually beyond limits. Individual consumers may have erroneous preconceptions about issues as diverse as the entire range of human error, and it would be both impractical and very costly to require corrective information on all such points. Second, pure omissions do not presumptively or generally reflect a deliberate act on the part of the seller, and so we have no basis for concluding, without further analysis, that an order requiring corrective disclosure would necessarily engender positive net benefits for consumers or be in the public interest. If we were to ignore this last consideration, and were to proceed under a deception theory without a cost-benefit analysis, it would surely lead to perverse outcomes. The number of facts that may be material to consumers -- and on which they may have prior misconceptions -- is literally infinite. Consumers may wish to know about the life expectancy of clothes, or . . . [a] canner's policy on trade with Chile. Since the seller will have no way of knowing in advance which disclosure is important to any particular consumer, he will have to make complete disclosures to all. A television ad would be completely buried under such disclaimers, and even a full-page newspaper ad would hardly be sufficient for the purpose. For example, there are literally dozens of ways in which one can be injured while -25- riding a tractor, not all of them obvious before the fact, and under a simple deception analysis these would presumably all require affirmative disclosure. The resulting costs and burden on advertising communication would very possibly represent a net harm for consumers. Id. at 1059-60 (footnotes omitted). On this law, we see no reason to depart from the district court's determination that Tomasella failed to state a deceptive acts claim against Defendants based on their packaging omissions. As Tomasella does not pursue a theory premised on affirmative misrepresentations, 12 the decisive issue is thus whether Defendants' packaging omissions are deceptive acts in the sense that they ha[ve] the capacity to mislead consumers, acting reasonably under the circumstances, to act differently from the way they otherwise would have acted (i.e., to entice a reasonable consumer to purchase the product). Aspinall, 813 N.E.2d at 488. By our lights, Defendants' packaging omissions lack the requisite capacity to mislead. The district court's classification 12Tomasella did allege in the Nestlé complaint that the company's failure to disclose abusive labor practices was especially egregious for Nestlé Crunch because the product includes a Nestlé Cocoa Plan label accompanied by the following statement: The Nestlé Cocoa Plan works with UTZ Certified to help improve the lives of cocoa farmers and the quality of their products. The district court rejected the argument that this label constituted an affirmative misrepresentation, and because Tomasella does not challenge this ruling on appeal, she has therefore waived any argument to that effect. See Pignons S.A. de Mecanique v. Polaroid Corp., 701 F.2d 1, 3 (1st Cir. 1983). -26- of Defendants' packaging omissions as pure omissions makes good sense. The challenged conduct does not clearly fall into either of the nondisclosure categories that the SJC and FTC have specifically recognized as being deceptive. By not disclosing on the packaging of their chocolate products that there are known labor abuses in their cocoa supply chains, Defendants stay silent on the subject in a way that does not constitute a half-truth or create any misleading impressions about the upstream labor conditions in the cocoa supply chain. 13 Following International Harvester's framework, then, the risk of hazard -- here, that the worst forms of child labor may have been used in producing the cocoa beans used to make the chocolate products being offered for sale -- does not render the 13 On appeal, Tomasella attempts to cobble together a misleading impression theory by contending that Defendants' omission[s] relate[] to the central pleasure-providing characteristic of the product, which is undermined by undisclosed child and slave labor, and that Defendants create[] an implied but false impression in the mind of a reasonable consumer that their for-sale chocolate products are in the country legally even though importing the cocoa beans used to make those products violates the Tariff Act, 19 U.S.C. § 1307. However, because Tomasella failed to raise these arguments below, we decline to address them for the first time on appeal. See Goodwin v. C.N.J., Inc., 436 F.3d 44, 51 (1st Cir. 2006) (Under the familiar raise-or-waive rule, legal theories not asserted in the lower court cannot be broached for the first time on appeal.). For the first time on appeal, Tomasella also contends that International Harvester supports her position because, there, the FTC did not dismiss the 'pure omission' in that case outright, but found a violation under the FTC unfairness test, as exists here. But this last-minute argument is waived too. See id. -27- products unfit for normal use, and thus the act of offering the chocolate for sale without mention of these labor practices is not a deceptive act. 104 F.T.C. at 1063. Moreover, the allegation that Defendants did not correct at the point of sale Tomasella's false, pre-existing conception that their chocolate products were completely free of the worst forms of child labor does not translate into deception liability. Id. at 1059. Without citing any precedent, Tomasella argues that because the worst forms of child labor are universally condemned, consumers acting reasonably under the circumstances would never expect a product to implicate such abhorrent labor practices. We need look no further than the FTC's stated policy rationales to explain the shortcomings of this argument. Declaring Defendants' packaging omissions to be deceptive would inevitably expand[] that concept virtually beyond limits, considering the vast universe of erroneous preconceptions that individual consumers may have about any given product as well as [t]he number of facts that may be material to [them]. Id. at 1059; cf. Animal Legal Defense Fund Bost., Inc. v. Provimi Veal Corp., 626 F. Supp. 278, 279-81 (D. Mass. 1986) (dismissing claim that veal producer acted deceptively and unfairly by not telling consumers about the upstream mistreatment of calves in its supply chain because Chapter 93A was an inappropriate remedy for consumers to enforce Massachusetts' -28- animal cruelty laws), aff'd, 802 F.2d 440 (1st Cir. 1986).14 On appeal, however, Tomasella disputes the district court's decision to rely on FTC guidance in general and on International Harvester in particular. For support, Tomasella points to the SJC's recognition that [a] duty exists under 14 The dispute before us comes on the heels of several cases out of the Ninth Circuit rejecting variants of Tomasella's claims under California's consumer protection laws on similar grounds. See McCoy v. Nestlé USA, Inc., 173 F. Supp. 3d 954 (N.D. Cal. 2016) (dismissing claims that Nestlé violated California consumer protection laws by omitting information about labor abuses in its supply chain on the packaging of its chocolate products because this omission was not contrary to any representations made by the defendant or a fact that the defendant had a duty to disclose), aff'd, 730 F. App'x 462 (9th Cir. 2018); Dana v. The Hershey Co., 180 F. Supp. 3d 652 (N.D. Cal. 2016) (dismissing claims that Hershey violated California consumer protection laws by omitting any disclosure of labor abuses in its supply chain on the packaging of its chocolate products as this omission was not unlawful, unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent), aff'd, 730 F. App'x 460 (9th Cir. 2018); Hodsdon v. Mars, Inc., 891 F.3d 857 (9th Cir. 2018) (affirming dismissal of claims against Mars for violating California consumer protection laws by omitting any disclosure of labor abuses in its supply chain on the packaging of its chocolate products because Mars had no duty to disclose this information and the omission itself was not unethical or misleading); see also Wirth v. Mars, Inc., 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14552 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 5, 2016) (holding Mars did not violate California consumer protection laws by omitting any disclosure of labor abuses in its supply chain on the packaging of its cat food products because Mars had no duty to disclose this information and the safe harbor doctrine forecloses this claim through the California Transparency in Supply Chain Act of 2010), aff'd, 730 F. App. 468 (9th Cir. 2018); Barber v. Nestlé USA, Inc., 154 F. Supp. 3d 954 (C.D. Cal. 2015), aff'd, 730 F. App'x 464 (9th Cir. 2018); Hughes v. Big Heart Pet Brands, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5508 (C.D. Cal. Jan. 15, 2016), aff'd, 740 F. App. 876 (9th Cir. 2018); De Rosa v. Tri-Union Seafoods, LLC, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5497 (C.D. Cal. Jan. 15, 2016), aff'd, 730 F. App'x 466 (9th Cir. 2018). -29- [Chapter] 93A to disclose material facts known to a party at the time of a transaction, Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Att'y Gen., 94 N.E.3d 786, 797 (Mass. 2018) (quoting Underwood, 605 N.E.2d at 835), cert denied sub nom. Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Healey, 139 S. Ct. 794 (2019), in tandem with Section 3.16(2)'s broad disclosure language. Based on this duty to disclose material facts, Tomasella argues that she need only allege a knowing omission of material information likely to mislead consumers in order to plausibly state a deception claim based on Defendants' omissions. 15 In other words, Tomasella contends that requiring disclosure in the absence of any [common law] duty to do so . . . is the equivalent of saying pure omissions are actionable under Chapter 93A. Tomasella also submits that we have already recognized that her allegations are sufficient to state a Chapter 93A claim in V.S.H. Realty v. Texaco, Inc., 757 F.2d 411, 417 (1st Cir. 1985), where we noted that [we] [were] not convinced . . . that [the plaintiff in that case] need[ed] to allege more than a failure to disclose a material fact to state a cause of action under Chapter 93A. Because of these clear statements of law regarding Chapter 93A's inherent disclosure 15By Tomasella's account, she has pleaded enough under the proposed approach to survive the motion to dismiss based on the allegations that chocolate consumers were generally unaware of [the labor abuses] and reasonably assume otherwise, that studies . . . indicate that abusive labor practices are material to consumers, and that she would not have purchased the chocolate products had she known the truth about their origins. -30- obligations, Tomasella submits that the district court need not have consulted FTC caselaw at all, let alone International Harvester. For the following reasons, we disagree. First and foremost, the statutory directive in Chapter 93A to consult FTC and federal court interpretations of relevant terms and standards is clear. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 93A, § 2(b); see also Aspinall, 813 N.E.2d at 487-88. Additionally, the supposed clear statements of Massachusetts law to which Tomasella cites do not, in our view, lend support to her position. We begin with Exxon, which addressed the very different issue of the scope of the Massachusetts Attorney General's investigative power under Chapter 93A. See Exxon, 94 N.E.3d at 791 ([T]he Attorney General is statutorily authorized to investigate whatever conduct she believes may constitute a violation of [Chapter 93A]. (citing Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 93A, § 6(1))). To lay out the facts, the Attorney General had launched an investigation into Exxon for a potential Chapter 93A deceptive acts violation when internal company documents surfaced showing that Exxon knew about the climate risks associated with its product (fossil fuels), failed to disclose that information to the public, and instead sought to undermine the evidence of climate change altogether, in order to preserve its value as a company. Id. at 790. Specifically, the Attorney General posited the following -31- failure-to-disclose theory: despite Exxon's sophisticated internal knowledge about the climate risks associated with the use of its fossil fuel products, the company failed to disclose what it knew to . . . consumers, id. at 792, and thus, its incomplete marketing and advertising of those products to Massachusetts consumers potentially created a misleading impression, id. at 795 (quoting Aspinall, 813 N.E.2d at 395). When, pursuant to its authority, the Attorney General issued a civil investigatory demand (CID) to Exxon for documents and information relating to [the company's] knowledge of and activities related to climate change, Exxon filed suit in state court to set aside the CID. Id. at 790. Before the SJC, Exxon argued that, as a nonresident corporation, it was not subject to personal jurisdiction in Massachusetts, and that to the extent that the Attorney General's investigation (and thus the CID) arose from the company's advertising and marketing activities in Massachusetts, those activities were conducted by Exxon's franchisees (branded gas stations) whose communications could not be attributed to Exxon. Id. at 794. After agreeing with the lower courts' determinations that this argument belied the language of Exxon's brand franchise agreements, see id. at 794-95, the SJC concluded that the CID's request for information relating to Exxon's knowledge about the -32- climate risks of its products fell squarely within the Attorney General's statutory authority to investigate whether Exxon had indeed engaged in deceptive advertising . . . by either giving a misleading impression or failing to disclose material information about climate change. Id. at 795. While we understand the attraction of drawing a parallel to Exxon, there are no grounds for reading the case as establishing the liberal pleading standard for which Tomasella advocates. Rather, what the case confirms is that Chapter 93A authorizes the Massachusetts Attorney General to investigate conduct that she believes might amount to a Chapter 93A violation, see Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 93A, § 6(1) (authorizing the Attorney General in furtherance of her investigatory powers to examine . . . any documentary material of whatever nature relevant to such alleged unlawful method, act or practice and take testimony under oath), and reinforces the jurisdictional norms to which the investigation (including any CID issued in relation thereto) must adhere. As the legal issues pertained to the Attorney General's powers during the preliminary stages of a Chapter 93A investigation, the SJC did not take (and indeed could not have taken) a position in Exxon as to whether Exxon's nondisclosure constituted a deceptive act. Therefore, we cannot extrapolate a rule from that narrow decision that consumers (whose private right of action derives from a -33- different section of the statute, see Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 93A, § 9) plausibly state a deceptive acts claim simply by pleading that a company had knowledge of any potentially material information regarding one of its products but failed to disclose it. Likewise, in our view, Underwood falls short of the broad applicability that Tomasella ascribes to it. There, the SJC considered whether an owner-broker was guilty of a deceptive act by failing to disclose the possibility of lead-based paint in a residential dwelling to childless prospective tenants. 605 N.E.2d at 834. The SJC held that the owner-broker's nondisclosure did not violate Chapter 93A because the theory of his liability was premised on a suspicion or a likelihood that the house contained lead paint rather than actual knowledge. Id. at 835. From this, Tomasella draws the conclusion that Chapter 93A's disclosure obligations extend to all nondisclosures of all known (as opposed to suspected) material facts. But we find no basis for such a broad deduction in the language of the decision. Next, as the district court rightly noted, Section 3.16(2) cannot be fairly read as a carte blanche for Chapter 93A liability either. By its terms, the regulation provides for liability when a seller fails to disclose to a buyer or prospective buyer any fact, the disclosure of which may have -34- influenced the buyer or prospective buyer not to enter into the transaction. 940 Mass. Code Regs. 3.16(2). Read literally, Section 3.16(2) would give rise to a nearly boundless disclosure obligation that exceeds even the breadth of Chapter 93A itself. Thus, the SJC has stated that despite the regulation's patently latitudinous language, it adds little, if anything, to the provisions of [Chapter 93A] itself, Underwood, 605 N.E.2d at 836, which as we know, proscribes material, knowing, and willful nondisclosures that are likely to mislead consumers acting reasonably under the circumstances, Mayer v. Cohen-Miles Ins. Agency, Inc., 722 N.E.2d 27, 33 (Mass. 2000). Furthermore, a pragmatic reading of the regulation is consistent with the SJC's recognition that [t]he only limitations on [the Attorney General's] interpretive power are that his definitions [of unfair and deceptive] not be inconsistent with FTC and Federal court decisions . . . and the usual limitations that his regulations be neither arbitrary nor capricious. Purity Supreme, Inc. v. Att'y General, 407 N.E.2d 297, 304 (Mass. 1980). Additionally, it tracks the original intent behind drafting Chapter 93A with openended language, which was to allow for the regulation of future, as-yet-undevised, business practices. Id. at 303-04 (citing Commonwealth v. DeCotis, 316 N.E.2d 748, 754 (Mass. 1974)). Thus, we are hard-pressed to interpret Section 3.16(2) as mandating the -35- disclosure that Tomasella seeks, even in the context of the Massachusetts case law that she cites. Lastly, Tomasella's reliance on an isolated statement from our decision in V.S.H. Realty goes nowhere. That case implicated the as is purchase of a used bulk storage petroleum facility, for which the seller (Texaco) represented that it had not received any notice from government entities regarding modifications or improvements to the facility or any part thereof and only disclosed an oil seepage in the garage building. V.S.H. Realty, 757 F.2d at 413. After discovering a second oil seepage, which the U.S. Coast Guard had previously sought to investigate, the buyer (V.S.H.) filed suit against Texaco alleging, inter alia, that the company violated Chapter 93A by failing to disclose the second oil leak. See id. On the narrow issue of disclosure obligations created by Chapter 93A, including Section 3.16(2), we reversed the district court's decision, which found that the nondisclosure of the property defect was lawful absent an independent duty to speak, even if that information would have influenced the buyer's decision to enter the purchase agreement. See id. at 416. Tomasella hangs her hat on a component of our reasoning in that case, in which we stated that [we] [were] not convinced . . . that V.S.H. need[ed] to allege more than a failure to disclose a material fact to state a cause of action under -36- Chapter 93A in light of the SJC's emphasis on the difference between statutory and common law causes of action for fraud and deceit, the latter of which requires a duty to disclose. Id. at 417 (citing Slaney v. Westwood Auto, Inc., 322 N.E.2d 768 (Mass. 1975)). However, our reasoning was two-pronged, and the cited statement was preceded by our observation that, even accepting the pleading requirement of a disclosure duty, V.S.H. ha[d] met its burden of establishing a duty by alleging that Texaco made partial or incomplete statements regarding the oil leaks on the property. Id. (citing Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 521, 529). In other words, our holding in V.S.H. Realty was inextricably linked to the facts of the case, which involved misleading half-truths relating to the reasonable fitness of the property, and thus are plainly distinguishable from those of Tomasella's case. Next, maintaining that it was error to consult FTC caselaw at all, Tomasella also contends the district court was doubly misguided in consulting International Harvester because the SJC had previously looked to another FTC case, In re Cliffdale Assoc., Inc., 103 F.T.C. 110 (1984) (hereafter Cliffdale), for guidance on deception liability analysis. We find this argument unavailing as well. Tomasella notes specifically that in Aspinall, the SJC looked to Cliffdale, from which it imported the FTC standard for -37- gauging deceptive acts: if, first, there is a representation, omission, or practice that, second, is likely to mislead consumers acting reasonably under the circumstances, and third, the representation, omission, or practice is material. Aspinall, 813 N.E.2d at 487 (quoting Cliffdale, 103 F.T.C. at 165). She fails to recognize, however, that International Harvester recounts the exact same standard, both FTC cases deriving it from the same 1983 FTC policy statement. See Int'l Harvester, 103 F.T.C. at 1056 & n.18. In any event, in Cliffdale, the FTC held that marketers of a car engine had engaged in unlawful deceptive acts by placing advertisements and distributing sales materials that made false and misleading claims about the value and performance of the engine. Id. at 161-62. Given the context, it makes sense that the SJC would cite the mention of the deception standard in Cliffdale (as opposed to International Harvester) in the Aspinall decision, where the plaintiffs alleged that a cigarette company violated Chapter 93A by marketing . . . Marlboro Lights as 'light' cigarettes that deliver 'lowered tar and nicotine' despite having intentionally designed light cigarettes to deliver as much, if not more, tar and nicotine than regular cigarettes. 813 N.E.2d at 479. By contrast, Tomasella does not allege that Defendants intentionally made false and misleading statements in their advertisements or marketing materials for the chocolate products. -38- Instead, as in International Harvester, the heart of the dispute at hand centers around whether Defendants' staying silent on the packaging of the chocolate products at the point of sale about upstream labor practices in their cocoa supply chains constitutes a deceptive act. To be sure, Cliffdale did implicate a deceptive nondisclosure, which arose from the marketers' use of advertisements with consumer testimonials that created the impression that the endorsements were made by actual users of the car engine and were thus unrestrained and unbiased. 103 F.T.C. at 171. As it turned out, a good number of the individuals whose testimonials were featured in the marketing materials were actually business associates of the marketers, not actual product users. Id. at 172. The FTC concluded that the marketers were guilty of making a deceptive claim because failing to disclose the relationship between the endorser and the seller had created a false and misleading impression in the minds of consumers, who were particularly gullible because of the difficulty that average consumers have in assessing a product like a car engine themselves. Id. The SJC echoed this ruling in Aspinall, where it stated that advertising may be deceptive when it create[s] an over-all misleading impression through failure to disclose material information. 813 N.E.2d at 487. This does -39- not, however, speak to the deceptive character of omissions like the ones at issue here, which is precisely why International Harvester provides a useful reference point. Therefore, we hold that Tomasella has not plausibly stated a Chapter 93A deception claim. We now turn to her second theory.