Forty years ago this month the New York Franchise Act, General Business Law of New York, Article 33, §§680, was enacted into law by the Legislature and it is safe to say that the statute achieved its intended purpose—the eradication of massive fraud and criminality that had permeated the then-nascent franchise arena.

I authored the New York Franchise Act while serving as Assistant Attorney General (later Special Deputy Attorney General) of New York and was tasked with assisting the then-head of the Attorney General’s Legislative Bureau in Albany—Frank Fioramonti— in lobbying the act by means of testimony and written submissions to the Legislature. I thought it would be of interest to review how and why this statute came to be—and how its wise administration over the past 40 years achieved the New York Franchise Act’s goal.