Dear Editor:
Business marketing departments advertise today with such shading of the truth it’s like they feel they have a right to say what they please. After all, it is “free” enterprise isn’t it?
It is almost as if corporate America has discovered a new Constitutional provision located in the list of the other sacred rights in the First Amendment. If religion and politics are free to sell their wares making all kinds of crazy promises, why can’t companies?
In fact, there is a provision in the Constitution that applies to what businesses can and can’t get away with in advertising. It is the “contract clause,” (Article I, Section 10) But this provision is called “freedom of contract” not because businesses can do whatever they want, but because the seller and the buyer have freedom from government interference as long as they are truthful with each other and honor their obligations.
For example, the seller must not engage in deceptive pricing, deceptive comparisons, misleading/untrue claims or depictions, and competitor disparagement, and must make truthful disclosures about things like research, labeling, and guarantees. One particularly bad practice is using these kinds of tactics to take advantage of the poorly educated or incapacitated—the biblical concern of “afflicting” the poor, widows, and fatherless.
If companies aren’t clear about what they are promising (in federal law, “the nature, characteristics, qualities, or geographic origin of goods, services or...
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