Consumer law — Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act — Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act — Vehicle predelivery service charges — Costs and profit disclosure — Dealer committed per se violation of FDUTPA where mandatory cost and profit disclosure appeared on vehicle lease order but did not appear on vehicle lease — No merit to argument that inclusion of statutory disclosure on lease without specifying precise fees to which it applies satisfies requirements of FDUTPA — Affirmative defenses arguing substantial compliance and contemporaneous instrument rule are not legally sustainable where clear and unambiguous language of statute requires that disclosure appear on all documents — Application of absurdity doctrine to abrogate clear and unambiguous statutory language is not permissible — Plaintiff who paid illegal fee suffered actual damages and is not required to show actual reliance on omission of disclosure — Fact that dealer is authorized by statute to charge electronic filing system fee does not immunize its conduct under safe harbor provision of FDUTPA where statute does not authorize dealer to charge EFS fee in unfair and deceptive manner — Voluntary payment defense fails because plaintiff’s ignorance or mistake of law in paying pre-delivery service fees is irrelevant in context of per se FDUTPA violation — Dealer that knowingly collected illegitimate debt and asserted right it knew did not exist violated FCCPA — Dealer has not established bona fide error defense to FCCPA claim where it had no policies and procedures in place to prevent alleged error and cannot produce evidence proving alleged programming error occurred — No merit to claim that plaintiff has failed to join indispensable party
Legal Topics
Consumer law — Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act — Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act
Jan 10th, 2023 in by admin