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# Reverse ‘Calif. Consumer Protection Regime’: WLF
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/reverse-calif-consumer-protection-regime-wlf/
- Published: 2023-01-05T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T18:10:49.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Devices, #legacy-id-D5153474

Washington Legal Foundation is asking the Supreme Court to review and overturn a California Court of Appeal decision that imposed $300 million in civil penalties on Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon unit for marketing its pelvic mesh product in the state. WLF [says](https://www.wlf.org/2022/12/15/communicating/wlf-asks-supreme-court-to-rein-in-californias-arbitrary-consumer-protection-regime/?ref=fdaweb.com) (includes a link to the *amicus* brief) the state court decided that every communication the company made about its pelvic mesh product, whether to doctors or patients, written or verbal, violated the state’s consumer protection laws.

Its brief, the advocacy group says, “details how a series of statutory and prosecutorial overreaches have radically transformed California’s well-intentioned consumer protection laws into a trap for the wary and unwary alike. As applied today, California law fails to put the public on fair notice of what kind of conduct constitutes a violation. With no definition of a ‘violation’ for purposes of assessing penalties, courts are left to interpret and apply amorphous, elastic, and imprecise language, such as whether a practice is ‘unlawful,’ ‘unfair,’ or ‘fraudulent,’ on a case-by-case basis. This deprives businesses of the benefit of fair notice and due process.”

WLF says the state laws’ vagueness has resulted in an increasingly standardless and often arbitrary application of the laws by California state courts and, at times, their federal counterparts. “The chaos has snowballed over time, providing even greater opportunities and incentives for abuse of the judicial process by government entities and others who seek to enforce one or both statutes (Unfair Competition Law and False Advertising Law),” it says.