The Michigan Supreme Court just breathed new life into the state’s once-aggressive Consumer Protection Act (“MCPA”).

From 1999 until last week (July 31, 2026), the MCPA was almost entirely toothless. Even if the MCPA prohibited a deceptive or fraudulent business practice–it outlawed many dishonest billing, advertising, and sales scams–a business holding any sort of business license typically couldn’t be sued successfully under the Act. This was because, in 1999 an activist, “business-friendly” Michigan Supreme Court interpreted a subsection of the Act to mean it did not apply to any licensed industry. Almost every business is legally required to have a state license in Michigan: health care providers, car dealers and service shops, gas stations, banks, chiropractors, lawyers, accountants, child care providers, even barbers. The act was effectively dead.

In a new decision released last week, Attorney General v. Eli Lilly & Co., the Michigan Supreme Court found that licensed businesses can be liable under the MCPA for fraudulent and deceptive practices. This was a common-sense reading of the text of the MCPA itself, which the court acknowledged had been wrongly interpreted in the 1999 decision and cases following it.

The MCPA contains broad prohibitions of deceptive trade practices:

1. Misrepresenting the identity, origin, or quality of what’s sold — false claims about source, sponsorship, certification, geographic origin, ingredients, benefits, grade, style, or passing off used goods as new; also disparaging a competitor by false statements of fact. § 903(1)(a)–(f)

2. Deceptive advertising, pricing, and inducements — advertising with no intent to sell as represented, bait advertising without a quantity disclosure, phony price-reduction claims, “free” offers with buried conditions, rebates contingent on post-closing events, and prize offers tied to sitting through a sales pitch. § 903(1)(g)–(i), (r), (w), (ff)

3. Manufactured need and high-pressure tactics — claiming a repair or replacement is necessary when it isn’t, fabricating a home defect that endangers the family, delivering unrequested goods as though they were ordered, and coercion through the timing and nature of a sales presentation. § 903(1)(j)–(l), (aa)

4. Obscuring legal rights, credit terms, and warranties — creating confusion about a party’s rights, obligations, or remedies, about credit terms, or about a salesperson’s authority to close; unconspicuous warranty disclaimers; unknowing waivers of statutory rights; and having the consumer sign acknowledgments the merchant knows to be false. § 903(1)(m)–(p), (t), (v)

5. Material omissions and false impressions — failing to disclose a material fact the consumer couldn’t reasonably discover, failing to disclose facts made material by the seller’s own affirmative representations, and any statement that leaves the consumer reasonably believing the state of affairs is other than it is. § 903(1)(s), (bb), (cc)

6. Failure to deliver what was promised — promising prompt or timely performance the merchant knows won’t happen, gross discrepancies between oral pitch and written contract, failure to provide promised benefits, and failure to promptly refund deposits or release security interests after cancellation. § 903(1)(q), (u), (y)

7. Exploiting vulnerability and grossly excessive pricing — taking advantage of a consumer’s disability, illiteracy, or inability to understand the language of the agreement, and charging a price grossly in excess of market. § 903(1)(x), (z)

8. Violations of specific statutory mandates — environmental and “degradable/recyclable” marketing claims, home and telephone solicitation rules, conditioning a sale on disclosure of a Social Security number, card-receipt truncation, identity theft protection act violations, misleading tribute-band billing, and the Act’s own cross-referenced sections. § 903(1)(dd)–(ee), (gg)–(ll)

Some of these practices also violated other laws. But the MCPA came with a powerful private enforcement mechanism: unlike other laws prohibiting the same misconduct, the MCPA required the offending business to pay the attorney fees of the defrauded consumer. This was designed to incentivize lawyers to take consumer fraud cases to court, and to enable consumers to hire attorneys even when there were not huge amounts of money at issue. No one in their right mind would pay an attorney $400 per hour to sue a company over a $900 overcharge, even if the overcharge was outright fraudulent. But if the offending business had to pay those attorney fees, that’s a game changer. The MCPA tilted the field in favor of the consumer to keep Michigan’s consumer-facing businesses honest.

For more than 25 years, the MCPA was ineffective. Unscrupulous business owners and executives knew it was ineffective, and consumers were defrauded and deceived by businesses at an alarming and increasing rate. From inscrutable and misleading medical bills to systematically denied insurance claims and everything in between, consumers were mostly out of luck when it came to holding a bad business accountable. A lawyer wouldn’t take your case unless the amount of money you lost was either six figures or more and a slam-dunk case, or you agreed to pay their hourly rate–typically hundreds of dollars per hour. Consumer lawsuits were few and far between, relying on sparse federal consumer laws that only applied to a narrow set of transactions.

That changes now. After the Eli Lilly decision restoring the MCPA prohibitions, we as consumer protection attorneys, and you as consumers and insiders, have the opportunity to make Michigan a place where honesty and fairness are expected, are the norm. A place where deceiving consumers to get their money is rare, but is punished appropriately when it occurs.

Consumer fraud and deceptive practices are often hard for the consumer to even identify. Confusing language in agreements, fast talking, misdirection and outright lies may prevent the consumer from knowing anything about how it is they’re being cheated. But they’re left with the conviction that the business they’ve dealt with cheated them and it has cost them money.

Sometimes consumer fraud and deception are systematic within a business organization–known to insiders but difficult or impossible for the consumer to find out on their own. Unscrupulous businesses may train employees to fudge numbers, change a billing code, charge the client for a service not provided, use a deceptive sales pitch, or otherwise cheat, in ways that unfairly cost the consumer money. Some businesses may incentivize such misconduct through their compensation structure, and look the other way as employees deceive consumers by not performing work the consumer paid for them to perform.

These are only a few examples, but they point up an important truth: insiders–people with detailed knowledge of a deceptive or fraudulent business practice–have been given a potent tool to bring an end to that practice. In short, if you’ve had enough of your employer cheating the individuals and families it deals with, the restoration of the MCPA means that firms like Westbrook Law PLLC can represent the defrauded consumers–in individual cases or class actions–and bring lawsuits to punish the bad business. Those lawsuits sometimes bankrupt the business; in other instances, the business may survive but end the practice.

Enforcement of the MCPA, if done thoroughly, will result in better, more honest and transparent businesses that serve their customers better, statewide, over the long run. Can you imagine a day-to-day life in which you didn’t routinely feel like a business was trying to scam you? That is our vision at Westbrook Law, one case at a time.

If you have detailed knowledge of a deceptive, unfair, or fraudulent business practice that involves consumer transactions, we would love to hear from you. Contact Us