The COVID Project
The record
- Jurisdiction
- Massachusetts (Attorney General, consumer-protection regulation) · Massachusetts
- Level
- Sector regulator
- Authority
- G.L. c. 93A, sec. 2(c); G.L. c. 30A, sec. 2 (emergency regulations)
- Issued
- 2020-03-20 Mar. 20, 2020
- Effective
- 2020-03-20
- End
- Standing regulation; operates during 'any declared statewide or national emergency' (the Massachusetts state of emergency ran March 10, 2020 to June 15, 2021)
- In force
- Mar. 20, 2020 (no end date recorded; counted as in force for 120 days)
- Quarters
- 2020 Q22020 Q32020 Q42021 Q12021 Q22021 Q3
2020 Q22020 Q32020 Q42021 Q12021 Q22021 Q3
- Limitation types
- Other
- Addressees
- any business at any point in the chain of distribution or manufacture selling goods or services necessary for the health, safety or welfare of the public to consumers or to other businesses
- Functions reached
- SF and wholesale pricing of every manufacturer, distributor and retailer of goods and services necessary to health, safety or welfare (business-to-business sales included)
- SC supplier-cost documentation
- CB
- OP pricing records
- Collection
- State utilities, housing and agriculture agencies AGY-ST-UTILITIES-HOUSING-AG
Operative words
(3) It shall be an unfair or deceptive act or practice, during any declared statewide or national emergency, for any business at any point in the chain of distribution or manufacture to sell or offer to sell to any consumer or to any other business any goods or services necessary for the health, safety or welfare of the public for an amount that represents an unconscionably high price. (4) A price is unconscionably high for the purposes of 940 CMR 3.18(3) if: (a) there is gross disparity between the price charged or offered; and 1. the price at which the same good or service was sold or offered for sale by the business in the usual course of business immediately prior to the onset of the declared statewide or national emergency; or [2. the price at which the same or similar product is readily obtainable from other businesses;] and (b) the disparity is not substantially attributable to increased prices charged by the business's suppliers or increased costs due to an abnormal market disruption.
Enforcement
G.L. c. 93A, secs. 4 (Attorney General actions; civil penalties up to $5,000 per violation) and 9, 11 (private actions)
Notes
Before the March 20, 2020 amendment the regulation reached only petroleum products (subsections (1)-(2), retained). The amendment is a consumer-protection emergency rule of the kind the assignment names.
Retrieval noteThe codified text was read on Cornell LII's republication of the Code of Massachusetts Regulations, which notes the amendment by Mass. Register Issue 1420 effective March 20, 2020; mass.gov refused every fetch (HTTP 403). Graded secondary because the Commonwealth's own publication was not read.