Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 11.3 Retroactive Application of Statutory Provisions
A second timing issue is the extent to which a UDAP statutory provision applies to practices that occurred before the effective date of the statutory provision. In the 1970s, a major impediment to private UDAP actions was that UDAP statutes often did not exist at the time of the deceptive practices. Today the continual amending of UDAP statutes has led to a more common problem: which version of the legislation should be used—that in effect at the time of the challenged practice, or that in effect at the time the consumer brings the claim?