Consumer protection refers to the laws designed to aid retail consumers of goods and services that have been improperly manufactured, delivered, performed, handled, or described. Such laws provide the retail consumer with additional protections and remedies not generally provided to merchants and others who engage in business transactions, on the premise that the consumers do not enjoy a sufficient bargaining position with respect to the businessmen with whom they deal and therefore should not be strictly limited by the legal rules that govern recovery for damages among businessmen. The overarching goal is to protect individuals and the interest of the public in general from unfair and misleading activity in business and commerce (such as false advertising and deceptive trade practices) and scams perpetrated by criminals (such as identity theft and pyramid schemes) that harm a substantial number of consumers.
Marathon is a city on Knight's Key, Boot Key, Key Vaca, Fat Deer Key, Long Point Key, Crawl Key and Grassy Key islands in the middle Florida Keys, in Monroe County, Florida, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 10,255. As of 2005, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau is 10,626.