McIlvaine Law Firm » Are your Classmates Really Looking for you?

Are your Classmates Really Looking for you?

A very common internet advertisement promises you that your former high school classmates are looking for you and that all you have to do is sign up for their service and you will be connected.  Is this a definite promise, or mere salesmanship and puffery?

One customer, Anthony Michaels (perhaps you went to school with him?), feels he was duped into subscribing for the premium service on false promises that some of his classmates had already done so and that he would find their contact information upon doing so.  Unfortunately for everyone, Michaels found none of his classmates and discovered that a general advertisement did not specifically apply to him.  He has filed a class-action lawsuit against the California based company alleging various breach of contract theories, as well as California business code violations. 

We now live in an internet age, and the rules that applied to old world advertising do not necessarily apply to the online world.  The advertising in question here was exclusively shown on web pages.  Thanks to cookies stored on your personal computer, it is entirely conceivable that an advertising banner could be programmed to provide a unique message to a particular viewer.  In fact, this is becoming a common practice. 

Admittedly, no reasonable person would have taken a highway billboard ad this literally, and would have understood such an ad to be merely describing the purpose of the service with no personal message implied.  But perhaps it is not so unreasonable for Mr. Michaels to believe that this webpage ad really was notifying him of information of uniquely tailored to himself. 

Source

Published by: Spencer on November 19th, 2008 | Filed under Advertising, Ecommerce, Media Law



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