New York Consolidated Laws, General Business Law - GBS § 348. Purpose and intent of article

The legislature declares that the state has a responsibility to protect New Yorkers from unfair, deceptive and abusive business acts and practices.  The legislature recognizes the limitations of the current state law, which prohibits only the use of deceptive business acts and practices, and has proven insufficient to satisfy the state's responsibilities to protect New Yorkers and the New York economy from unfair, deceptive, and abusive business practices.  For too long, New Yorkers, especially New Yorkers with limited income, communities of color, seniors, children, veterans, and immigrant populations, have been left vulnerable to unscrupulous business practices.  It is time for New York to join all but a handful of New York's fellow jurisdictions by adopting a comprehensive unfair, deceptive, and abusive business acts and practices statute that gives government and private parties the tools to address these harms.  The state must achieve the goal of deterring and remedying a broad range of unfair, deceptive, and abusive business practices, and leveling the playing field for the state's many honest businesses and nonprofits that treat their customers fairly.  It must also anticipate future unfair, deceptive, and abusive acts, including from new and emerging technologies.  To that end, this article defines unfair and abusive acts and practices expansively to reach conduct that is unfair or abusive but arguably not deceptive.

The state must also ensure the most meaningful and effective protection to New Yorkers against unfair, deceptive, and abusive business practices.  This article therefore eliminates atextual exceptions imposed by courts over the last five decades that have limited the attorney general's power to enforce the statute to acts that are “consumer-oriented” or that have an impact on the public at large.  The attorney general has a special responsibility to the public to create a fair marketplace for all.  That responsibility extends to protecting businesses and nonprofits as well as individuals.  There is no reason to believe that a small business or non-profit is any better able to defend itself from unfair, abusive, and deceptive conduct than a consumer, or that small entities need the protections of this article any less than individuals do.  The market and wider society is harmed by the negative consequences that flow from unfair, deceptive, and abusive business practices even if those acts and practices have not been understood as “consumer-oriented”.