Events

On April 21, 2023, Senior Counsel Robert M. Langer will address the UConn’s Center for Energy and Environmental Law’s (“CEEL”) annual Earth Day Conference to discuss both the origin and the importance of the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (“CUTPA”).  The annual Earth Day Conference usually attracts more than 500 attendees, both in person and remotely.

Bob will kick off UConn’s second panel with the story of how Connecticut’s “Little FTC Act” came to be a powerful legal tool for protecting consumers. This is the 50 year anniversary since the passage of CUTPA in 1973.  By way of background, Bob drafted many of the key amendments to CUTPA in the 1970s and 1980s, and litigated quite a number of the seminal CUTPA cases in the Connecticut Supreme Court, all during his tenure as the Connecticut Assistant Attorney General in charge of both antitrust and consumer protection, before joining Wiggin and Dana in 1994.  Additionally, he is the co-author of the leading treatise on CUTPA, Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices, Business Torts and Antitrust, (Vol. 12, Connecticut Practice Series, Thomson Reuters), and since 1979, he has taught courses that include CUTPA and the FTC Act as an adjunct professor at UConn Law School, Quinnipiac University School of Law, and the UConn School of Business Administration MBA program.

Bob will be joined by two gifted public speakers, Anahid “Annie” Ugurlayan, Deputy Director of the National Advertising Review Board of the Better Business Bureau National Programs, and Lesley Fair, a Senior Attorney in the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission.  Their presentations with include a discussion of the successes at the federal level in combating greenwashing, and related conduct, in various forms of advertising.