“Consumer Protection Acts or Consumer Litigation Acts? A Historical and Empirical Examination of State CPAs,” was written for the American Tort Reform Foundation by Professor Joanna Shepherd-Bailey of the Emory University School of Law.  Professor Shepherd-Bailey demonstrates that what she calls a steady “devolution” of CPAs since the 1980s  ̶  from laws enforced primarily by state attorneys general seeking injunctive relief in the public interest to laws that now allow and thus encourage private litigation in sometimes selfish pursuit of significant awards for damages and attorney’s fees – has come to hurt consumers as much or more than they protect them.

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