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.
Cresskill is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2000 Census, the borough population was 7,746. The town got its name from the watercress that grew in its streams, or "kills". Cresskill was incorporated as a borough by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on May 8, 1894, from portions of Palisades Township at the height of the "Boroughitis" phenomenon then sweeping through Bergen County. A portion of the borough was annexed by Alpine in 1904. Cresskill was the home of Camp Merritt, the major debarkation point for more than a million American troops being sent abroad to fight in World War I. A large obelisk memorial (referred to by locals as "The Monument") was dedicated in 1924, set in the middle of the Camp Merritt Memorial Circle at the intersection of Madison Avenue and Knickerbocker Road, to commemorate the fact.