PA Supreme Court Narrows UTPCPL Catch-All Deceptive Conduct Liability
In-house counsel for consumer goods and services vendors operating in Pennsylvania must track this ruling, which narrows the scope of the state’s broad unfair trade practices catch-all provision for deceptive conduct claims.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that a vendor’s silence does not constitute deceptive conduct under the state Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law’s catch-all provision when the vendor has no legal duty to disclose the relevant information. The ruling resolves prior ambiguity around whether silence could trigger catch-all liability absent a duty to speak. In-house counsel for consumer goods and services vendors operating in Pennsylvania should review existing disclosure practices to confirm alignment with applicable legal duties to speak, and update relevant compliance training for customer-facing teams to reflect the narrowed scope of catch-all deceptive conduct liability.