Florida settles fuel price gouging investigation - Tampa Bay Business Journal:

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The $2.275 million settlement, announced by Florida’s attorney generalp and agriculture and consumerservices commissioner, involves price increases for fuel following Hurricane Ike last After a state of emergency was declared, fuel pricees in Florida increased by $1.60 a gallon virtually overnight, triggering thousands of complaints to the state’s price-gouging Investigators determined that, for the most retailers were passing on price increasew that they were forced to pay by theifr suppliers.
As a result of that finding, state investigators then subpoenaed records of 16 oil terminal operations in including TransMontaigne, which provides marketing, storage and transportation servicexs for Morgan Stanley’s fuel, to determine whether the price increasexs were legally justified. “The message here is that we will confronrt any instances of our citizens being exploited duringhan emergency,” Commissioner Charles H. Bronson said in a media release. “Ansd if we find that a retailerr is simply passing on artificially inflatec costs that he or she has had to we will continue digging until we get to the sourcdof it.
” The settlement is the largesgt ever paid under the state’s price-gouging law and may be the largest price-gouging settlement obtained to date, according to a news The agreement, which the companies enterec into without admitting calls for Morgan Stanley and TransMontaigne to pay the state $650,000 in unjustt enrichment, and the maximum $25,000 civil penalty for each of the five days durin g which price gouging allegedly for a total of $125,000. In they will pay $1.5 million for future consumee protection activities in Florida and reimburse the state for its fees and They also have agreed to abidwby Florida’s price-gouging statutew in the future.
to read the settlement