Practitioners engaged in consumer protection oft-times are less than circumspect in instituting litigation under New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act, N.J.S.A. 56:8-1 et seq. (CFA), due to its liberal construction, mandatory treble damages and fee-shifting provisions. Despite being dubbed as one of the nation’s strongest consumer protection laws, where an out-of-state defendant is contemplated, care should first be taken to determine whether the CFA applies in the first instance.

Take the scenario of a Pennsylvania-based automobile auction at which a New Jersey retail dealer purchases a vehicle and sells it to an ultimately dissatisfied New Jersey consumer. Assume the client—in New Jersey—wishes to sue not only his retail dealer but also the Pennsylvania auction and the non-New Jersey based automobile wholesaler who sold the vehicle through the auction. This article only focuses upon the New Jersey buyer’s claims against the auction and the wholesale seller. Because of its strikingly dissimilar consumer laws, we employ Pennsylvania as our example to underscore a practitioner’s need to make a pre-litigation, threshold choice-of-law analysis.

The Standard to Be Applied