We’ve amended our lawsuit against the FTC for allowing sale of unsafe, unrepared recalled cars

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has now filed unacceptable consent decrees with 3 more used car dealers, which we and our co-plaintiffs Center for Auto Safety and Consumers for Automobile Reliability and Safety (CARS) consider to be in violation of several provisions of law. We claim that the agency’s decisions to allow such demonstrably unsafe used vehicles to be sold to the public as “safe,” “repaired for safety issues,” or “subject to a rigorous inspection” violate the FTC Act's Section 5 prohibition against unfair and deceptive practices and other points of law. So we've updated our complaint against the FTC to challenge a total of 6 of its actions.

U.S. PIRG

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has now filed unacceptable consent decrees with 3 more used car dealers, which we and our co-plaintiffs Center for Auto Safety and Consumers for Automobile Reliability and Safety (CARS) consider to be in violation of several provisions of law. We claim that the agency’s decisions to allow such demonstrably unsafe used vehicles to be sold to the public as “safe,” “repaired for safety issues,” or “subject to a rigorous inspection” violate the FTC Act’s Section 5 prohibition against unfair and deceptive practices and other points of law. So we’ve updated our complaint against the FTC to challenge a total of 6 of its actions.

Excerpt from the attached:

Plaintiffs challenge six “Decisions and Orders” issued by Defendant Federal Trade Commission (“FTC” or “Commission”) that permit dealers of “Certified Pre-Owned” vehicles—i.e. used motor vehicles such as cars, trucks, motorcycles, and motor homes—to market and advertise such vehicles as “safe,” “repaired for safety issues,” or “subject to a rigorous inspection,” even when such vehicles are the subject of a pending safety defect recall required by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (“NHTSA”), without requiring the dealers to remedy those safety defects and instead by disclosing that such vehicles “may” be subject to such recalls.  

[…]

In addition, the record before the agency demonstrated that the sale of “certified” used cars as “safe,” “repaired for safety issues,” or “subject to a rigorous inspection,” when such vehicles are in fact not safe because they are the subject of pending safety recalls, is extremely detrimental to consumers who buy used cars—particularly poor, unsophisticated, and non- English speaking consumers—because it deprives them of the economic value of their purchases, imposes on them the burden of having to find out if the vehicles are subject to recalls and to have the vehicles repaired, and exposes them and those they invite into their vehicles, as well as the public around them, to the risk of injury or death caused by the defective vehicles. 

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