## Facts

- Unique Ideas, Inc. and its principal marketed a mail-order “get rich quick” plan promising substantial profits through a booklet and related sales materials.
- The promotions made specific earnings and response-rate claims that were found deceptive; purchasers typically paid for the booklet and additional materials but did not obtain the promised profits.
- The Attorney General brought an enforcement action under General Business Law article 22-A, resulting in a December 1974 consent judgment enjoining further deceptive practices.
- Within days of the consent judgment, defendants arranged mass mailings using materially identical solicitations; commercial mailers testified that over 2.4 million solicitations were sent.
- After the post-judgment mailings, defendants’ receipts increased; although individual victims and losses were not fully identified, the trial court found at least $209,000 reasonably attributable to the violations.

## Issues

1. Whether Judiciary Law § 773 limits civil contempt fines for violating an injunction to a nominal maximum amount per discrete contempt act, regardless of the aggregate injury caused.
2. Whether, in a consumer-protection enforcement matter, the Attorney General may obtain a compensatory civil contempt fine functioning as restitution based on a reasonable approximation of consumers’ aggregate loss without proving each purchaser’s individual damages.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals modified the Appellate Division order and reinstated the trial court’s contempt disposition, including a $209,000 compensatory fine (with an additional suspended amount conditioned on compliance).
- The court rejected limiting the fine to $1,000 based on treating the conduct as only four contempt violations.
- The court held that civil contempt sanctions must be remedial and may be set to indemnify injured parties for actual loss, including losses to defrauded consumers represented by the Attorney General.

## Legal Principles

- Civil contempt is remedial; sanctions are designed to compensate for injury caused by disobedience, not to punish.
- Under Judiciary Law § 773, a civil contempt fine may be set in an amount sufficient to indemnify the aggrieved parties for actual loss or injury; a nominal per-act figure does not control when a compensatory award is warranted by proof of injury.
- When widespread consumer harm makes individualized proof impracticable, courts may rely on a reasonable approximation of aggregate loss, particularly where the contemnor’s conduct contributes to the difficulty of precise calculation.
- In public consumer-protection enforcement, a compensatory civil contempt fine may operate as restitution to prevent retention of proceeds obtained through post-injunction misconduct.

## Conclusion

The Court of Appeals held that civil contempt fines for violating a consumer-fraud injunction may be calibrated to reasonably estimated consumer losses and are not confined to nominal per-act penalties, reinstating a compensatory award tied to proceeds attributable to the post-judgment scheme.


State v. Unique Ideas, Inc., 44 N.Y.2d 345 (N.Y. 1978)