N.Y. General Business Law Section 348
Purpose and intent of article

The legislature declares that the state has a responsibility to protect New Yorkers from unfair, deceptive and abusive business acts and practices. The legislature recognizes the limitations of the current state law, which prohibits only the use of deceptive business acts and practices, and has proven insufficient to satisfy the state’s responsibilities to protect New Yorkers and the New York economy from unfair, deceptive, and abusive business practices. For too long, New Yorkers, especially New Yorkers with limited income, communities of color, seniors, children, veterans, and immigrant populations, have been left vulnerable to unscrupulous business practices. It is time for New York to join all but a handful of New York’s fellow jurisdictions by adopting a comprehensive unfair, deceptive, and abusive business acts and practices statute that gives government and private parties the tools to address these harms. The state must achieve the goal of deterring and remedying a broad range of unfair, deceptive, and abusive business practices, and leveling the playing field for the state’s many honest businesses and non-profits that treat their customers fairly. It must also anticipate future unfair, deceptive, and abusive acts, including from new and emerging technologies. To that end, this article defines unfair and abusive acts and practices expansively to reach conduct that is unfair or abusive but arguably not deceptive. The state must also ensure the most meaningful and effective protection to New Yorkers against unfair, deceptive, and abusive business practices. This article therefore eliminates atextual exceptions imposed by courts over the last five decades that have limited the attorney general’s power to enforce the statute to acts that are “consumer-oriented” or that have an impact on the public at large. The attorney general has a special responsibility to the public to create a fair marketplace for all. That responsibility extends to protecting businesses and non-profits as well as individuals. There is no reason to believe that a small business or non-profit is any better able to defend itself from unfair, abusive, and deceptive conduct than a consumer, or that small entities need the protections of this article any less than individuals do. The market and wider society is harmed by the negative consequences that flow from unfair, deceptive, and abusive business practices even if those acts and practices have not been understood as “consumer-oriented”.

Source: Section 348 — Purpose and intent of article, https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/GBS/348 (updated Feb. 27, 2026; accessed Feb. 28, 2026).

348
Purpose and intent of article 349
Unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts and practices unlawful 349–A
Pricing 349–B
Residential telephone equipment advertising, sale and warranty requirements 349–B–1
Voice over internet protocol 911 disclosure 349–C
Additional civil penalty for consumer frauds against elderly persons 349–D
Energy services company consumers bill of rights 349–E
Counterfeit and non-functional airbags 349–F
Pension poaching prevention 349–G
Restrictions on applications for and use of credit cards and medical financial products 349–H
Observant consumer protection law 350
False advertising unlawful 350–A
False advertising 350–B
Disclosures required in advertisements using the title “doctor” 350–B–1
Disclosures required in advertisements using a senior specific designation 350–C
Notice of proposed action 350–D
Civil penalty 350–E
Construction 350–F
Exceptions 350–F–1
After-the-fact referral fees

California:	Codes
Colorado:	C.R.S.
Florida:	Statutes
Nevada:	NRS
New York:	Laws
Oregon:	OAR, ORS
Texas:	Statutes
World:	Rome Statute, International Dictionary

N.Y. General Business Law Section 348 Purpose and intent of article

N.Y. General Business Law Section 348
Purpose and intent of article