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.
Barrytown is a hamlet within the town of Red Hook in Dutchess County, New York, United States. It is within the Hudson River Historic District, a National Historic Landmark, and comprises four of the Hudson River Valley estates: Edgewater, Messina, Rokeby, and Sylvania. The Messina Property, at the northern sector of the hamlet was purchased in 1929 by the New York District of the Brothers of the Christian Schools who established on that site the St. Joseph's Normal Institute as a teacher training facility for the Junior and Senior Novices of their Roman Catholic religious congregation. In the early 1970s the property was bought by the Unification Church, where its Unification Theological Seminary is located. The majority of the houses in Barrytown were built in the mid to late nineteenth century, often with the purpose to house workers at the local estates and accompanying farms.