Robert ("Bob") Fellmeth is an American lawyer. He is a tenured Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law, holder of the Price Chair in Public Interest Law, and executive director of the Center for Public Interest Law and the Children's Advocacy Institute.
Education Fellmeth attended Kailua High School on Oahu in the state of Hawaii.Kailua High School is one of four public high schools on the Windward side of Oahu, Kailua High School He was elected its student body president in 1962 and graduated in 1963. Fellmeth then graduated with an AB from Stanford University in 1967 and with a JD from Harvard University in 1970. While at Harvard, Fellmeth chaired the law school's Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Research Committee and worked on the initial issues of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.The first issue of the Harvard CR-CL Law Review appeared in 1966, Fellmeth was an editor in 1969-70. An early volume featured his co-authored article: "The Federal Trade Commission and the Freedom of Information Act, a Study in Malfeasance", measuring the FTC's compliance with the 1967 enacted FOIA. A subsequent issue in 1970 featured two Nader-related articles, one by Nader on the FOIA and one by John Esposito leading the Nader air pollution federal inquiry. See Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review
Initial consumer advocacy While at Harvard Law School, Fellmeth became one of the original "Nader's Raiders," working as part of the consumer movement of the 1960s and '70s with consumer advocate Ralph Nader. He was one of the initial 7 law students investigating the Federal Trade Commission in 1968, and was one of three co-authors of The Nader Report on the Federal Trade Commission.See Schulz, Fellmeth and Cox, The Nader Report on the Federal Trade Commission, Baron Press, 1968, at The Nader Report on the Federal Trade Commission. After its publication, he organized what was then called "Nader's Raiders" in the summer of 1969, raising funds and recruiting researchers divided into 5 groups examining the performance of the FDA, Department of Agriculture, air pollution and water pollution control and the transportation regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), respectively. Resulting books included The Chemical Feast, Vanishing Air, Water Wasteland, Sewing the Wind, and the Interstate Commerce Omission. He supervised the ICC project of seven law students, resulting in a jointly authored book, The Interstate Commerce Omission (Grossman, 1969). During this period, Life Magazine featured these researchers in an article entitled "The Lone Ranger Gets a Posse" that pictured the students, Fellmeth, and the team directors standing behind Nader on the Capitol steps.Life Magazine October 3, 1969 -- Cover: Ballet/Hendrix moneyblows.com
Fellmeth remained with Nader after graduation from the Harvard Law School in 1970. He then directed a study of land use policy in California, under the aegis of Nader's Center for Study of Responsive Law, producing a report and then the book: The Politics of Land (Grossman, 1970). From 1971 to 1973, he directed the Nader Congress Project as part of that Center. The Project produced 30- to 50-page profiles of every incumbent member of Congress, written by young journalists and journalism students, with support from volunteer researchers in the state capitols and Congressional districts. The profiles included demographics about districts, campaign finance details and campaign promises, and included early revelation of committee votes of members (previously not easily available publicly). Many of the profiles were published in summary form in newspapers in the relevant Congressional districts just prior to the 1972 elections. The profile writing part of the Congress Project was overseen by Joan Claybrook, later director of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and later president of the national consumer and public interest organization: Public Citizen.See [www.citizen.org]
The Project also published five books about the major committees of the Congress, with Fellmeth contributing to The Commerce Committees book edited by Project Director David Price, later a member of Congress. The Project also produced the best seller Who Runs Congress. Fellmeth wrote the preface as project director, with the book's authorship divided among David Zwick, James Fallows, and Mark Green.Mark Green, James Fallows, David Zwick, Who Runs Congress, Bantam Press, 1972, see Fellmeth's work related to the early consumer movement in the 1970s, including the Federal Trade Commission (the FTC Improvements Act) and the deregulation of trucking (the Surface Transportation Deregulation Act). He was one of the first consumer advocates to embrace restoration of free market forces – and at times was identified as the "conservative" within the movement. He and the other "Raiders" are associated with the consumer safety and environmental statutes of this period. Fellmeth is featured in the biographies of Nader and the early years of the consumer movement,See Acton and LeMond, Ralph Nader: A Man and a Movement, (Warner Paperback, 1972), 239 pages. including the documentary An Unreasonable Man.
White collar crime prosecutor: 1973–1981 Fellmeth left the Nader organization after the Congress Project in 1973. That same year, he began service as a public prosecutor in San Diego County, enforcing state law as a deputy district attorney until 1981, specializing in white collar crime. In 1974, he started the nation's first dedicated local prosecution unit enforcing antitrust and unfair competition statutes.See California Bus. & Profs. Code Sections 16700 et seq., 17200 et seq. and 17500 et seq. For the next seven years, he filed related cases. From 1979 to 1981, he was cross commissioned as an Assistant United States Attorney – a status that allows the filing of criminal or civil cases in either the state or federal jurisdiction. Over this period, he prosecuted 22 antitrust and unfair competition cases. Those reported (with published appellate decisions) included People v. Mobile Magic and People v. National Association of Realtors, with a resulting judgment of liability for per se unlawful tie-in and price fixing offenses against the national, state and local realtor trade associations.People v. National Association of Realtors 120 Cal.App.3d 459 (1981), See People v. Mobile Magic Sales Inc. 96 Cal.;App.3d 1 (1980); See also Corsetti v. Rice 21 Cal.3d 431 (1978).
During this period, Fellmeth taught antitrust and unfair competition subject areas at the College of the National Association of District Attorneys, and at the National Judicial College (the training facility in Reno, Nevada created by the U.S. Supreme Court for the training of federal and state court judges).
He also worked with the California District Attorneys' Association to rewrite the unfair competition laws of California. Four amendments were introduced by then state legislator Alan Sieroty, which moved the statute from Civil Code Section 3369 and expanded it into its present form in Ca. Bus. & Profs. Code Section 17200 et seq.Amendments were enacted in 1977, and added most of the current provisions of the law in new Chapter 5 of the Business and Professions Code starting at section 17200, see Stats. 1977, c.299. In later years, he enforced the statute, first as a prosecutor, and then as private civil counsel, and over the last twenty years as a public interest advocate through the Center for Public Interest Law.The most recent consumer case of Fellmeth's is the CPIL antitrust prosecution of the rental car industry and the California Travel and Tourism Commission (CTTC) for alleged price fixing. Filed in 2007, the case went to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal in 2010, See Shames v. Hertz 607 F3d 611 (9th Cir. 2010) on the liability of the CTTC. The trial court had dismissed the agency out, but the published decision reversed the district court and upheld its potential liability. See . The case was resolved in 2013 with judgment for the plaintiff class. See at "curriculum vita", p. 11.
After 1993, he became concerned about plaintiff attorney abuses of the Unfair Competition Law he had been instrumental in drafting. He recommended reforms to require some of the due process elements of class action law to prevent multiple or spurious lawsuits for the same alleged offense. The state legislature appointed him as special consultant to its own "Law Revision Commission" from 1995 to 1998 to consider reforms. His proposals included a requirement that the person bringing the action for the "general public" qualify as a typical victim and must "adequately represent" the public (e.g., have no inappropriate relationship with the attorneys involved and no conflicts of interest), that proper notice be given to the public through the offices of the Attorney General and proper publication for "opt out" opportunity, and that a court review all cases and settlements for due process compliance and fairness. These measures, Fellmeth argued in his final report, would limit abuses, and confer proper finality to cases.See Robert Fellmeth, California's Unfair Competition Act: Conundrums and Confusions, Report to the Law Revision Commission of California, January 1995, 227-277; see However, his reforms were opposed by both the insurance industry and the trial lawyers and the legislature rejected them as addressing non-existent problems. Three years later, the Trevor Law Group in Beverly Hills and several other firms began to commit widespread abuses as he had predicted. That is, law firms brought hundreds of pro forma actions, particularly against car repair firms, nail salons and restaurants, for technical violations and demanding payment, with no finality or res judicata that would prevent another suit for the same alleged wrongs, and without judicial review of attorneys' fees demanded and paid. The State Bar responded with disciplinary action against the lawyers involved, and Fellmeth was retained as one of the Bar's "expert witnesses" in these prosecutions—which eventually disbarred most of the offending attorneys.
However, the abuses also mobilized industry to limit California's Unfair Competition Law. They proposed Proposition 64 in 2004, which went well beyond the changes urged by Fellmeth, and imposed restrictions that he opposed. The measure passed by a 59% to 41% margin and included full class action requirements beyond those recommended by Fellmeth, and over his stated opposition in op eds at the time. The proposition removed from unfair competition coverage of any case not involving direct financial loss. Hence, health, safety, privacy and environmental offenses no longer were included within the statute's ambit.
California Athletic Commission During the 1976 to 1981 period, Fellmeth was appointed by the governor to the State Athletic Commission, then a five-member body regulating boxing and wrestling, et al. Fellmeth was selected to chair the commission for 3 of his 5 years by other commissioners. He drafted the first pension plan for boxers and sponsored its legislative enactment in 1980 (Bus. & Profs. Section 18880 et seq.) It currently covers approximately 500 boxers, those who fought enough rounds over four or more years to "vest." It also includes disability benefits. Through the Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL), Fellmeth has periodically defended the pension plan from promoter opposition and attempts to eliminate it. In recent years, CPIL supported legislation that has liberalized it to allow early benefits for non-boxing employment vocational training. Fellmeth has advocated for adoption of similar pension plans nationally and in other major states (Nevada, New Jersey, New York). However, those efforts have not been successful, and the California system remains the only pension system in place for professional boxers.See testimony and articles at