House committee members request FTC scrutinize trial lawyer marketing, advertising practices

Republican members of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce (E&C) Committee this week expressed “significant concerns” that certain lawsuit marketing and advertising practices by trial lawyers pose a serious threat to Americans’ public health and safety.

“Plaintiff lawyers intentionally continue to target and deceive vulnerable Americans into mistakenly believing that medications are unsafe,” the committee members wrote in a Nov. 2 letter sent to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Joseph Simons. “These schemes to generate lawsuits and revenue for themselves at the expense of consumers’ health and safety are potentially illegal.”

Therefore, the situation deserves the attention of the FTC, which has the authority to scrutinize whether such “scare tactics” violate the FTC Act, wrote E&C Committee Republican Leader Greg Walden (R-OR) and U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee Republican Leader; U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), Health Subcommittee Republican Leader; U.S. Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH), Communications and Technology Subcommittee Republican Leader; and U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Republican Leader.

“As more therapeutics and vaccines come online to deal with the COVID-19 global pandemic, we are concerned that these lawsuit marketing and advertising practices will further hamper our country’s ability to bring this health crisis under control and save lives,” according to their letter. 

The lawmakers noted that while the FTC last year sent warning letters to seven legal practitioners and lead generators expressing concerns about certain lawsuit ads — and which stated that certain lawsuit ads may “mislead consumers into thinking they are watching a government-sanctioned” announcement — plaintiff lawyers still “are successfully misleading and scaring people to stop taking their physician-prescribed medications,” they wrote.

The E&C Committee members requested that Simons answer several questions regarding the FTC’s actions with respect to trial lawyers, the impacts of any deceptive practices on the public health and safety of U.S. communities, and whether such practices violate the FTC Act, among other queries.