Can a restaurant or retailer be held to &quot;posted&quot; prices? I walked into a fast food restaurant in New York City where a large poster in the front of the store advertised a new dinner special for $6.99. That was quite a bargain so I went to the counter and ordered it. Apparently the "special" was so new, it wasn't on the menu. At any rate the staff refused to honor the advertised $6.99 price, and computed an a la carte (sum of the parts) price that came to over $10. I declined to buy the special at that price. I returned the following week, and the special was available, with a new posted price of $9.99. The staff would let me have it at that price (a small discount from $10-plus but not the bargain of $6.99), but for the same price, I ordered something else. I didn't want to be an SOB the first time, but supposing I was, could I have legally held the restaurant to the posted $6.99 price for the special?
Under the law of common law contracts, posting a price is an invitation to treat and is not binding. However, in many jurisdictions, there may be (probably is) statutory consumer protection law that make this practice illegal. Whether this means the business must honor the price or merely makes them liable to prosecution and fines depends on the specific law. For example, in Australia the law refers to this as multiple pricing. The law requires that the business withdraw the product from sale until the multiple pricing is fixed (i.e. they take the poster down) or, if they are unable or unwilling to do this, they must sell for the lower price. If they do neither then they have committed an offence and are liable to be fined by the government; the consumer does not get any compensation.
In practice this is rarely done in the US. There have been cases of employment contracts with automatic increases tied to the CPI (Consumer Price Index) or some other measure of inflation -- I believe at one time a number of union contracts specified this. Employer and employee could certainly agree on any such formula. But in the absence of any explicit provision for such a link, and an agreed formula for the resulting salary, I think a stated salary would be interpreted as a fixed sum, not subject to change until an explicit change is made. Fixed wages are the almost invariable custom, and in the absence of any explicit provision for an automatic inflationary change, I think a court would assume a fixed amount, if it came to a court case.
Typical in any of the several united-states No, this fails to meet two of the core elements of libel. The statement must be Adverse (fails) Stated by one party To a second party About a third party (fails) The case you're thinking of, where a company brags excessively about their company or products, are covered by a variety of securities and trade laws, such as false advertising. Many of these are applicable in the Federal domain, i.e. are Federal rather than state laws. Edit: Now I see you've changed the question a bit to claiming to be first. Yes, the injured party can sue for that, but they are more claiming false advertising than libel. Accusing someone of not being first-to-market is not a particularly powerful or damning claim. Oreo didn't invent the sandwich cookie nor did Apple invent the computer. So such a claim is really a lot more about the publicity than actual, provable damages; so the controversy is more likely to be aired outside the court system, or in the courts but mainly for the publicity. (an example of the latter being the &quot;Taco Tuesday&quot; trademark-busting action; IIRC Taco Bell even paid the other party's legal fees, despite prevailing.)
Your first course of action should probably be to return to the store, explained what happened, and ask either for another jar of peas or for your money back. Bring your receipt and the jar of peas with the moth in it. If the store refuses to refund your money or replace the jar of peas, you might try approaching the manufacturer. In my experience, European packaged foods have a telephone number for customer service among the fine print on the back of the label. If the manufacturer is no help, you could consider taking legal action, but the costs of doing so would be far greater than any benefit you are likely to realize. That is the same reason why the store and the manufacturer will probably handle your claim without much resistance; the cost of resisting is far higher than the cost of a jar of peas.
The answer would vary considerably. Consumer protection laws in some jurisdictions would find such a scheme to be an actionable deceptive trade practice, while consumer protection laws in other jurisdictions would find that it was not an actionable deceptive trade practice. One of the trickier points is quantifying the injury. How are you harmed if you buy a good at 20% off when it is really 20% off? How are you harmed if you don't buy a good at 20% off and then later buy the same good at 20% off when you were expecting it to be full price? Some consumer protection laws require that you show injury, and in those cases, it probably wouldn't be actionable. But, other consumer protection laws make false statements actionable, even if there is no reliance upon the statement or harm caused, in which case statutory damages might be recoverable.
As described, this may be a form of illegal bait-and-switch advertising, but not breach of contract. The contract states the specific vehicle to be sold, which does not match the test-driven car. If the dealer had listed the better car's VIN in the contract but supplied a different car, that would be breach of contract. Whether it is illegal advertisement depends on the representations and disclaimers made by the dealer. To the extent that the dealer supplied indications that there was a difference between the test model and the purchase model, or to the extent that the customer should have known that the test car had features not found in the specific model that the customer believed he was buying and paying for, the dealer was being non-deceptive. To the extent that the dealer holds that selling model X instead of model Y is an &quot;honest mistake&quot; on their part, the dealer was being deceptive (or, was plainly in breach of contract). It's hard to see what &quot;honest mistake&quot; the dealer might have made, but perhaps the mistake was &quot;not being clearer to the customer that they had test-driven a fancier model, not the one that they were actually buying&quot;. The customer's attorney could pursue this matter and either get the better car, or get a better financial deal, but it really hinges on who said / wrote what (and has a more believable story about what was said).
Typically, these notices are required where the individual packaging lacks the statutory nutritional and warning labels. If this is the reason for the prohibition, selling them separately is a breach of public health law. It may also be a breach of contract with the vendor of the collective pack. Breaking them up and placing them in vending machines, even if those are not accessible to the public is probably unlawful.
Note: IANAL Does the placement of a sticker stating, "We accept XYZ credit cards," essentially obligate a business to accept that card? It depends on whether you mean whether they are obligated to provide goods/services to someone who presents the card, or whether, having provided goods/services, they are obligated to accept the card as payment. For the first question, the answer is "no". The credit card brand could theoretically go after them, however, as names of credit networks are trademarks, so claiming to accept a card but not doing so is trademark infringement. For the second, the answer is "pretty much". Since they misrepresented their establishment, there is no mutual assent and therefore no contract. If they try to use "defrauding the innkeeper statutes", those require fraudulent intent. If you fully intended to pay for you meal by a credit card, and it was their choice to refuse payment, then you have no fraudulent intent. The only avenue I can see for them is some sort of equity argument, but that would be problematic, especially if they ask for the retail, rather than wholesale, price, and not worth the hassle of collecting. So, legally, you can just walk out, but in practice if they have a bouncer they might make trouble for you.