In Abbott Laboratories v. Superior Court, the Supreme Court today expands the scope of relief that individual county district attorneys can obtain for California consumers. [Disclosure: Horvitz & Levy filed an amicus brief in the case.] The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Goodwin Liu holds a district attorney can seek not only statewide injunctive relief under California’s unfair competition law, but also “civil penalties for violations occurring outside of the district attorney’s county as well as restitution on behalf of Californians who do not reside in the county.” In the case before it, the Orange County DA sued the pharmaceutical company defendant, alleging agreements to delay the market debut of a lower-cost generic version of a cholesterol drug.
The court also concludes that the state constitution’s empowerment of the Attorney General as the “chief law officer of the State” does not “constrain the Legislature’s prerogative to structure UCL enforcement so that a district attorney has authority to seek civil penalties and restitution for violations outside of his or her county.” The opinion says, “Ultimately, the pros and cons of centralization [i.e., actions by the AG] or decentralization in the enforcement of California’s consumer protection laws is a matter of policy for the Legislature to decide.”
Justice Leondra Kruger — with Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Justice Carol Corrigan — writes a concurrence in addition to signing the court’s opinion, “to call attention to a gap in the statutory enforcement scheme that the Legislature may wish to fill,” specifically, requiring DA’s to notify the AG of an inter-county UCL case, which would allow the AG to exercise their statutory authority to take over the case. Justice Kruger says that, “absent an effective mechanism for coordinating efforts, empowering scores of local officials to sue in the name of the State of California will inevitably create some practical challenges,” such as, regarding the UCL, the possibility of “district attorneys . . . rac[ing] each other to the courthouse and . . . enter[ing] settlements that maximize their own counties’ recoveries, potentially at the expense of consumers elsewhere in the state.”
The court reverses a divided Fourth District, Division One, Court of Appeal decision.
Justice Joshua Groban was recused and First District, Division Three, Justice Carin Fujisaki — the Chief Justice’s former principal attorney — sat pro tem.
