Court Opinion

ID: 9779409
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 21:49:56.506796+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:26.215688
License: Public Domain

BURDOCK, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
The majority has improperly applied the Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA) to the facts of this case. In doing so, the majority has held that any advertisement that is of questionable interpretation is a deceptive trade practice. Although I disagree with the majority’s holding, I do not intend to imply that I approve of any form of fraudulent or misleading advertising.
Here, the appellants devised a way to get their pro-life messages to women who were seeking abortions. This is not the type of activity the legislature sought to protect consumers from when the DTPA was enacted.
*545According to the former chief of the Consumer Protection Division of the Attorney General’s Office, prior to 1973, the consumer was at the mercy of unscrupulous people in the market place:
Debt collectors could work misery on debtors through incessant phone calls, profane language, and fraudulent misrepresentations. Landlords could interrupt a tenant’s utility service, bar him from his premises and wrongfully withhold his security deposit. Door-to-door salesmen could pressure people into purchasing expensive items they neither needed nor wanted and sellers, generally, could grossly exaggerate the value of their goods and services. This conduct was not necessarily lawful; much of it was not. The problem was that the remedies for such abuse were so woefully inadequate as to render virtually meaningless what rights a consumer did have. Even if an individual set of facts met the requirements for a cause of action, the time and cost of litigation when contrasted with the generally small recovery potential caused most consumers to simply 'grin and bear it,' leaving the wrongdoers to continue business as usual.
Philip K. Maxwell, Public and Private Rights and Remedies Under The Deceptive Trade Practices — Consumer Protection Act, 8 St. Mary’s Law Journal 617, 618 (1976-77).
The fact that the women met the definition of a consumer is not alone sufficient to imply coverage of the DTPA. In my review of the record, no one was actually offered an abortion. Further, my research of the DTPA leads me to believe that the underlying transaction must be commercial for the DTPA to apply. Here, the underlying transaction was moral in nature, not commercial. As I have discovered no authority which I believe would properly bring the facts of this case under the auspices of the DTPA, I would reverse the judgment of the trial court and render judgment for the appellants.