The April 2013 issue of the California Bar Journal has an "Ethics Byte" article by attorney Diane Karpman called "Lawyers increasingly exposed to Unfair Competition Law liability."
An excerpt:
Sometimes you can see clear trends developing in legal ethics. We are seeing an explosion of unfair competition law claims against lawyers, by lawyers, and against online legal service providers. By the way, according to insurance mavens, your coverage should include UCL claims, since they are incurred in the performance of legal services.
The article discusses People ex rel. Herrera v. Stender, ___ Cal.App.4th ___ (Dec. 4, 2012; pub. ord. Jan. 3, 2013) (discussed in this blog post), but, curiously, does not mention Law Offices of Mathew Higbee v. Expungement Assistance Services, ___ Cal.App.4th ___ (Mar. 14, 2013) (discussed here).
The article does mention a pending bill that would allow the State Bar to recover the civil enforcement penalties authorized by the UCL for public prosecutor actions. The bill does not add the State Bar to the list of public prosecutor offices permitted to bring UCL claims; rather, it would allow the State Bar to bring civil enforcement actions for violations of some of the Business & Professions Code provisions governing lawyers, and to recover the civil penalties of the UCL (Bus. & Prof. Code section 17206) in such actions.
In other words, if passed, the new law would "borrow" the UCL's civil penalty provisions.
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