Legal Library: Cases and Proceedings

Franchisor Premier Franchising Group LLC (PFG) and its former franchise sales organization, Franchise Fastlane LLC (FFL), will pay $1.85 million to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations that they made misleading representations about the Premier Martial Arts (PMA) franchise opportunity and violated the Franchise Rule. 

Under the proposed settlement with PFG, certain franchisees will be given the option to cancel their franchise agreements without penalty. 

The Federal Trade Commission and a group of seven state enforcers filed a complaint in federal district court against Vyera Pharmaceuticals, LLC, alleging an elaborate anticompetitive scheme to preserve a monopoly for the life-saving drug, Daraprim. The Commission vote to issue the complaint was 5-0. The complaint was filed on Jan. 27, 2020, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In a Jan. 14, 2022 ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote found Shkreli’s conduct “egregious, deliberate, repetitive, long-running, and ultimately dangerous.” Judge Cote banned Shkreli for life from the pharmaceutical industry.

On January 23, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York’s ruling.

On October 13, 2026, the FTC and seven states asked a federal judge to hold “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli in contempt based on their allegations that he flagrantly and repeatedly violated a 2022 court order that banned him from the pharmaceutical industry.

At the request of the FTC, a federal court has halted the activities of Digital Forensics Corporation LLC and its CEO for allegedly defrauding consumers out of millions of dollars using false and deceptive promises relating to “sextortion assistance services.

Greenway Auto Group has agreed that its price advertisements will prominently include the actual price a consumer must pay for a vehicle, excluding only charges the government requires consumers to pay, to settle the Commission’s lawsuit alleging the company advertised prices that were thousands of dollars below what it actually charged.

The Federal Trade Commission is acting against a large automotive dealer group, Asbury Automotive, for systematically charging consumers for costly add-on items they did not agree to or were falsely told were required as part of their purchase. The FTC also alleges that Asbury discriminates against Black and Latino consumers, targeting them with unwanted and higher-priced add-ons.

In an administrative complaint, the FTC alleges that three Texas dealerships owned by Asbury that operate as David McDavid Ford Ft. Worth, David McDavid Honda Frisco, and David McDavid Honda Irving, along with Ali Benli, who acted as general manager of those dealerships, engaged in a variety of practices to sneak hidden fees for unwanted add-ons past consumers. These tactics included a practice called “payment packing,” where the dealerships convinced consumers to agree to monthly payments that were larger than needed to pay for the agreed-upon price of the car, and then “packed” add-on items to the sales contract to make up that difference.

The Federal Trade Commission, joined by the Utah and Nevada Attorneys General, sued to stop a long-running deceptive pricing scheme run by contact lens retailer Lens.com Inc.

In a joint complaint, the FTC, Utah and Nevada allege that Lens.com, along with its owner Cary Samourkachian and an affiliated entity Speed Commerce LLC (together referred to as Lens.com), advertise artificially low prices for contact lenses but then charge consumers much higher prices through substantial, mandatory “Taxes & fees” charges.

Lens.com’s hidden fees routinely double the price it advertises for contact lenses, costing consumers hundreds of millions of dollars, the complaint alleges.

The FTC and seven states sued Ticketmaster and Live Nation alleging they deceived artists and consumers by engaging in bait-and-switch pricing through advertising lower prices for tickets than what consumers must pay to purchase tickets; deceptively claimed to impose strict limits on the number of tickets that consumers could purchase for an event, even though ticket brokers routinely and substantially exceeded those limits; and sold millions of tickets, often at much higher cost to consumers, on its resale platform that those brokers obtained in excess of artists’ ticket limits.

In 2022, the FTC and twelve state partners filed a lawsuit against pesticide manufacturers Syngenta and Corteva, alleging that each defendant implemented a post-patent loyalty program that paid distributors to forgo buying competing generic products. 

Motions to Dismiss

Syngenta and Corteva each moved to dismiss the lawsuit. On January 12, 2024, the Court issued an opinion and order denying defendants’ motions to dismiss.

Corteva Settlement

On September 25, 2026, the FTC and state plaintiffs, together with Corteva, filed with the Court an agreed stipulated order settling the Corteva case. The stipulated order requires Corteva to dismantle its existing active-ingredient-based post-patent loyalty programs. For a period of ten years, Corteva is prohibited from conditioning payments or other benefits to a customer on that customer purchasing a high share of its requirements for a given pesticide active ingredient from Corteva or on limiting its purchases of generic equivalents, ending Corteva’s exclusionary conduct that has raised pesticide prices for farmers.

The stipulated order applies to all of Corteva’s post-patent active ingredients, and it applies to existing programs and future programs for the term of the stipulated order (10 years). 

If you have concerns about whether Corteva is complying with its obligations under the stipulated order, please contact Paul Frangie at (202) 326-2697 and pfrangie@ftc.gov, Kenneth Libby at 202-326-2694 and klibby@ftc.gov, or bccompliance@ftc.gov.

FleetCor and its CEO will pay $100 million to settle a FTC administrative action alleging that the company charged its customers, who overwhelmingly are small businesses, undisclosed fees in connection with their use of fuel cards that FleetCor falsely promised businesses would save them money.

Amway Corp., one of the largest multilevel marketing companies in the U.S., and two of its affiliates—World Wide Group, L.L.C. (WWG) and Leadership Team Development Inc. (LTD)—will pay $225 million to resolve allegations from the Federal Trade Commission and the state of Washington that the companies use unfair and deceptive tactics to recruit members to its direct selling and multilevel marketing opportunity.

The Federal Trade Commission took action to resolve antitrust concerns arising from a stock purchase agreement between two of the largest firearm manufacturers, Beretta Holding S.A. (Beretta) and Sturm, Ruger & Co. Inc. (Ruger), by accepting a proposed consent order that prevents anticompetitive entanglements between the two companies.

Under the terms of the FTC’s proposed consent order, Beretta, a subsidiary of Upifra S.A., will be prohibited from appointing or nominating anyone to serve on Ruger’s board of directors unless that person is independent of Beretta.

The Federal Trade Commission is taking action against Amazon.com, Inc. for its years-long effort to enroll consumers into its Prime program without their consent while knowingly making it difficult for consumers to cancel their subscriptions to Prime.

In a complaint filed today, the FTC charges that Amazon has knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling in Amazon Prime. Specifically, Amazon used manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs known as “dark patterns” to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically-renewing Prime subscriptions.

Amazon also knowingly complicated the cancellation process for Prime subscribers who sought to end their membership. The primary purpose of its Prime cancellation process was not to enable subscribers to cancel, but to stop them. Amazon leadership slowed or rejected changes that would’ve made it easier for users to cancel Prime because those changes adversely affected Amazon’s bottom line.