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.
Kearneysville is an unincorporated community in Jefferson County in the U.S. state of West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle. According to the 2000 census, Kearneysville and its surrounding community has a population of 6,716. Kearneysville is located along West Virginia Route 9 at its intersection with West Virginia Route 480 halfway between Martinsburg and Charles Town. Settlement in the area that later came to be known as Kearneysville began in the mid-1700s. Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron sold land to various settlers, the first of whom was Nicholas Lemen in 1756. The next settler was General Horatio Gates, an American Revolutionary War general who named his holdings Traveller's Rest. Following him were Uriah and James Kearney, Sr. , for whose family the village was named. The town grew slowly at first, but with the coming of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the 1830s, the population increased throughout the county and local farmers began to take advantage of this faster means of transportation. In 1876, Kearneysville was the site of Jefferson's first commercial apple orchard. Because of its central location in the Panhandle, today Kearneysville is home to the Burr and Bardane Industrial Parks and is one of the fastest growing areas of Jefferson County with its many expansive residential communities such as Chapel View and the Village of Washington Trail.