FIRST FLORIDA KATRINA-RELATED PRICE GOUGING LITIGATION FILED
Today's Palm Beach Post reports that Attorney General Charlie Crist's office has filed it's first lawsuit against a store for price gouging and falsely advertising it's prices in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
The complaint is against a Swifty Star station along Interstate 10 in Tallahassee, a key eastbound evacuation route for Central Gulf Coast residents escaping the storm. According to the lawsuit filed in Leon County Circuit Court, the price for regular gasoline went from $2.809/gallon on August 31 to $3.509 the next day, although the store did not receive or pay for a new shipment at a higher wholesale price. The AG's investigation found that the store had raised it's price 70 cents for regular and 80 cents for premium between August 25 and September 1.
Store owner Al Khalil claims he hiked the price because he had run out of regular and was trying to conserve the amount of premium remaining.
Crist's office is seeking a $1,000 fine for price gouging and $10,000 for deceptive trade practices, as well as an order forbidding Khalil to charge more than the "going rate" in North Florida.
1 Comments:
Could Crist be more of a panderer of media attention? Rather than doing something that would actually be of benefit to all Floridians like launch a legitimate investigation of the oil companies, he goes after one shop owner and whips out a press release.
That shop owner probably bumped up the price because he watches the TV like everyone else and he knew he could expect the oil comapanies to be jacking up the price he was going to pay to the point where his business was going to suffer.
But Charlie wouldn't apply that standard to the oil companies - they can charge a retailer a ridiculously higher price on gas on a given day than they did the day before, regardless of whether the manufacturing cost of both shipments were the same to the oil company.
When a little guy does it, Charlie calls it gouging; when an industry does it to the entire State, Charlie calls it "reasonable business practices." The only thing his "investigation" of the oil companies garnered was support by them for his campaign.
Can't wait for his next press release, maybe he'll go after the Girl Scouts for raising the price of tagalongs. Happy motoring, everyone!
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