Florida Expands Suit Against AFP

Florida has broadened its lawsuit against American Family Publishers to include allegations that the subscription and prize-promotion firm targeted elderly repeat customers with deceptive solicitations while offering to rent or sell its list of nearly 470,000 senior citizens and retirees to other subscription and sweepstakes promoters. Florida attorney general Bob Butterworth made the charges in an updated complaint filed last month with the Hillsborough County Circuit Court in Tampa. The complaint, which amends Butterworth’s February suit for fraud and deceptive and unfair trade practices, alleges that AFP’s frequent mailings to elderly customers reinforced “the message that magazine purchases enhance the entrant’s opportunity to win” the company’s $11 million sweepstakes. The complaint also charges that last year AFP began offering its 349,542-name list of sweepstakes entrants age 55 and over, and its 118,081-name list of retired sweepstakes entrants, for rent to other magazine subscription and sweepstakes promoters. Butterworth added as defendants Time Customer Service president Timothy Adams, as well as Time Inc. and Time Warner Inc., the New York-based corporate parents of American Family Publishers (also known as American Family Enterprises), which is headquartered in Jersey City, NJ. Peter Costiglio, spokesman for both Time and Time Warner, said Butterworth’s amended complaint “is completely unwarranted and totally unreasonable. There is no legal justification whatsoever for this.”