Law / United States / 
Hawaii
Hawaii Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act, private injunctive relief
In force since .
An enforcement supervision rule binding private bodies.
- Criminal exposure
- No
- Private right of action
- Yes
- Obligation class
- Prohibition
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Expect a person likely to be damaged by a deceptive trade practice, including a misleading claim about data handling, to be able to seek an injunction without proving monetary damage or intent to deceive.
- Do not treat the absence of a chapter 487N breach as the end of private exposure. This separate deceptive-trade-practices statute reaches any deceptive trade practice, not only a data breach.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Private action for injunctive relief only (Haw. Rev. Stat. Sec. 481A-4); the chapter creates no civil penalty or state regulator enforcement mechanism.
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Must a consumer show more than a risk of future harm from a business's misleading data-handling claim to be a 'person likely to be damaged' who may be granted an injunction under HRS 481A-4(a), given that the subsection dispenses with proof of monetary damage, loss of profits or intent to deceive?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Section 481A-4 lets a court grant an injunction against a deceptive trade practice without proof of monetary damage or intent, allows costs and, in two stated cases, attorneys' fees, and adds the remedy to others at common law or under other statutes. It names no log or record duty and no party who may demand one. The section has no territorial or applicability clause, so no hook is taken.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
A person likely to be damaged by a deceptive trade practice of another may bring an action for an injunction, without needing to prove monetary damage, loss of profits, or intent to deceive.
This is a second, independent private-action route into Hawaii's data-privacy landscape, broader than the Security Breach of Personal Information Act's own private right of action in the conduct it reaches (any deceptive trade practice, not only a chapter 487N breach) but narrower in remedy, since it reaches only injunctive relief rather than damages, and it carries discretionary fee-shifting against a groundless or knowingly deceptive claim.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app processes personal data.
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