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.
Institute is an unincorporated community on the Kanawha River in Kanawha County, West Virginia, USA. The community lies off of Interstate 64 and West Virginia Route 25, and has grown to intermingle with nearby Dunbar. Institute is home to West Virginia State University (formerly the West Virginia Colored Institute, the source of the town's toponym) West Virginia State Community and Technical College, and the West Virginia State Police Academy. It was also the site of an August 2008 chemical plant explosion that killed one and injured another at the Praxair facility. The community is the location of the prehistoric Shawnee Reservation Mound, one of three remaining Adena-era earthwork mounds and enclosures found in an eight-mile stretch along the river. It was also called Fairgrounds Mound and Poorhouse Mound. It is located in Shawnee Regional Park. This mound is about 20’ high and 80’ in basal diameter, but was originally 25’ high and greater than 80’ in diameter. These mounds originally numbered more than 50 and there were ten enclosures when inventoried in the late 19th century by the Bureau of Ethnology. They were likely built approximately 300 BCE to 200 CE.