Case Involving Insufficient Evidence to Prove Consumer Fraud

In Crawford v. Ace Sign, Inc., 917 S.W.2d 12 (Tex. 1996), the court held that the plaintiff could not recover for consumer fraud because at most the evidence showed only: (a) that the defendants assured the plaintiff that they would publish the plaintiff's ad in the yellow pages and; (b) that the defendants failed to publish the ad. The court held that the defendants' assurances that the ad would be published were not false, misleading, or deceptive under the consumer fraud law, as to hold otherwise would convert every breach of contract action into a statutory consumer fraud claim. Crawford, 917 S.W.2d at 14. Also, "the statements themselves did not cause any harm. The failure to run the advertisement (the breach of the contract) actually caused the lost profits."Crawford, 917 S.W.2d at 14.