Pennsylvania Supreme Court Upholds Duty-to-Disclose Requirement for UTPCPL Catch-All Claims
In Short
The Background: All 50 states have adopted variations of statutes modeled on the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") Act. These statutes are intended to provide consumers with avenues of relief from certain unfair and deceptive trade practices. In addition to enumerating distinct types of unfair or deceptive trade practices for which consumers may bring claims against product sellers, many of the statutes contain "catch-all" provisions that reach beyond the specific types of prohibited practices to encompass other types of fraudulent or deceptive conduct.
The Result: In Halpern v. Ricoh, U.S.A., Inc., 353 A.3d 1264 (Pa. 2026), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that to allege a "deceptive conduct" claim under the catch-all provision in Pennsylvania's UTPCPL based on an omission of information by the defendant, a plaintiff must establish that the defendant actually had a duty to disclose the information that the plaintiff alleges should have been disclosed and caused deception by being omitted.
Looking Ahead: States across the country have various forms of consumer protection statutes, with some features similar to Pennsylvania's UTPCPL's catch-all provision. With claims under these statutes on the rise, often including requests for treble damages and attorney's fees, Halpern provides helpful precedent for manufacturers and sellers to defend against consumer claims that rest in whole or in part on allegations that they should have disclosed information about a latent product defect at the time of sale.
The Prior State of the Law
In recent years, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has expanded the scope of potential liability under the UTPCPL. In 2021, in Gregg v. Ameriprise Fin., Inc., 245 A.3d 637 (Pa. 2021), the Court held that the UTPCPL's catch-all provision, which permits claims based on "any other type of fraudulent or deceptive conduct which creates a likelihood of confusion or misunderstanding," "imposes liability on commercial vendors who engage in conduct that has the potential to deceive," without requiring any actual evidence of an intent to deceive by the vendor. Id. at 649-50. Then, in 2024, in Dwyer v. Ameriprise Financial, Inc., 313 A.3d 969 (Pa. 2024), the Court held that a plaintiff could recover treble damages under the UTPCPL at the same time as punitive damages under common-law claims for negligent and fraudulent misrepresentation. Halpern threatened to further expand the scope of UTPCPL liability. The consumer in Halpern asked the Court to declare that the UTPCPL's catch-all provision can be used to impose liability for failing to disclose information about a product defect that occurred later (in this case, years after the consumer purchased a Ricoh camera from an online reseller), without requiring the plaintiff to establish that the defendant had any duty to disclose the potential defect at the time of sale.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court's Decision
This time, the Court declined to expand the parameters of UTPCPL liability, holding that "a vendor's silence, absent a duty to speak, is meaningless and incapable of deception." Halpern, 353 A.3d at 1265. The Court explained that the scope of "deceptive conduct" under the UTPCPL is not so expansive that if a vendor "merely sells a defective product, the vendor was 'deceptive' as a matter of law under the UTPCPL's catch-all provision." Id. Instead, the implied warranty of merchantability would ensure buyers that the product is inherently sound. Id. Further, "if a vendor expressly warranties a product for a period of time," as was the case in Halpern, the vendor "affirmatively inform[s] buyers that [its] product[] may fail after these warranties extinguish." Id. The Court noted that its holding would "not foreclose a potential claim" where "a seller misleads, by commission or omission, a consumer into believing that a product is something that it is not." For example, if a vendor sells "flashlights that are not flashlights and automobiles that are lawnmowers in disguise . . . " Id. The three-justice dissent, drafted by the author of the majority opinion in Gregg, argued that "the plain meaning of 'deceptive conduct' necessarily encompasses a seller's failure to disclose that the product being sold is not what it purports to be and will not meet the ordinary consumer's bare minimum performance expectation for the class of product." Id. at 1284 (Wecht, J., dissenting).
Implications for Future Claims Under Deceptive Trade Practice Statutes
Halpern joins decisions from jurisdictions in several other states, including New Jersey, Wisconsin, Connecticut, and Indiana, holding that mere silence or "pure omissions" are not actionable under the catch-all provisions in their deceptive trade practice laws, absent a duty to disclose specific information that is the subject of the claim. Halpern preserves a critical boundary in consumer protection law by recognizing the common-sense principle that manufacturers and vendors should not be subject to liability under the catch-all provision to a deceptive trade practice statute for failing to disclose any defect a consumer believed should have been disclosed as a possibility at the time of sale. As the Court acknowledged, consumers seeking relief for defective products remain protected by Pennsylvania's well-established warranty and products liability laws, as well as the numerous well-defined existing avenues of relief for unfair and deceptive trade practices under the UTPCPL.
Two Key Takeaways
- With deceptive trade practice statute claims on the rise across the country, product manufacturers should continue to familiarize themselves with these laws and key court decisions, like Halpern, that interpret statutory language that has an impact on the scope of permissible claims.
- Of particular importance are decisions like Halpern that interpret a "catch-all" provision, which is often broadly phrased and thus a potential avenue for plaintiffs to try to expand the scope of liability.
