Burgerim allegedly duped franchisees

Chain faces Federal Trade Commission suit

By Scott Schwebke Southern California News

Group

Calabasas fast-food chain

Burgerim and its owner allegedly pocketed tens of millions of dollars from more than 1,500 people enticed to purchase franchises with false promises that destined most of them to fail, the Federal Trade Commission has said.

The FTC alleges in a federal lawsuit that Burgerim and owner Oren Loni recruited potential franchisees for an opportunity that purportedly required little to no business experience, while downplaying the complexities of owning and operating a burger restaurant.

“Burgerim promised consumers, including veterans, the American dream, only to leave them in a nightmare of debt and deceit,” Sam- uel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement Tuesday.

The Federal Trade Commission alleges fast-food chain Burgerim and its owner, Oren Loni, of pro ting o of false promises made to franchisees.

The complaint asks the court to stop the defendants’ alleged actions and impose civil penalties of up to

By Christopher Rugaber

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON

» Since the pandemic erupted two years ago, Forest Ramsey and his wife, Kelly, have held the line on prices at their gourmet chocolate shop in Louisville, Kentucky. Now, they’re about to throw in the towel.

In the past year, the costs of ingredients for their business, Art

Eatables, have surged between 10% and 50%. The Ramseys are paying their employees 30% more than they did before the pandemic.

And in the face of supply shortages, their packaging costs are up.

They’ve begun using 12-piece trays in their eight-piece chocolate boxes because they can no longer get any eight-piece trays.

So having just tried to survive for the past two years, the Ramseys, who own three retail outlets and sell custom chocolates to about 25 bourbon distilleries, have reached an unpleasant decision: They’re going to raise their customer prices 10% to 30%.

“We’ve got to adjust this — we can’t a ord to keep taking the hits anymore,” Forest Ramsey said.

The struggles of Art Eatables illustrate how inflation and tangled

The S&P 500 lost 1.9% after the White House encouraged all U.S. citizens to leave Ukraine within the next 48 hours, before possible military action by Russia. The price of oil rose more than 3%.

Stocks took a sudden turn lower in the middle of trading, with losses for the S&P 500 nearly tripling in about half an hour. Similar, knee-jerk swings swept through other markets as investors pulled money out of riskier things like stocks and moved instead toward the safety of bonds and gold.

They’re just the latest sharp veers in what’s already been a tumultuous 2022 for markets. Wall Street has been shaking as it comes to grips with a Federal Reserve forced to aggressively remove the low interest rates that investors love, in order to beat back high inflation.

The S&P 500 fell 85.44 points to 4,418.64 to lock in its first weekly loss in the last three but its fourth in the last six. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 503.53, or 1.4%, to 34,738.06, and the Nasdaq dropped 394.49, or 2.8%, to 13,791.15.

Tensions have been simmering for a while about possible military action by Russia, and U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Friday that the United States did not have definitive information that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an invasion. But he also said that “the threat is now immediate enough that prudence demands that it is the time to leave now” for Americans in the country.

Russia is one of the world’s largest energy producers, and the warnings gave oil prices an immediate jolt. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 3.3% to settle at $94.44 barrel amid the possibility that violence could disrupt supplies. U.S. crude rose 3.6% to settle at $93.10 per barrel.

Prices were already rising before the Ukraine warnings, likely because of a statement from the International Energy Agency that supplies in the oil market are already tight, said Stewart Glickman, energy equity analyst at CFRA.

Gold also rose, gaining nearly $20 in half an

Lawsuit

Three million seek $1.2B from Sutter

Plainti s sue health system in antitrust class-action trial

By Don Thompson

The Associated Press

SACRAMENTO » A lawsuit over high health care bills filed on behalf of more than 3 million employers and people seeks as much as $1.2 billion from a large Northern California health system in an antitrust classaction trial getting underway Thursday.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege in court documents that Sutter Health abused its market power and “caused enormous adverse economic impacts” by discouraging patients from using lower-cost insurance and lower-cost hospitals.

Sutter Health said in a statement Wednesday that it looks forward to “demonstrating that in Northern California’s highly competitive market, Sutter’s integrated healthcare network provides high-quality care that creates efficiencies, drives down total cost of care and benefits the diverse communities we serve.”

The lawsuit claims Sutter used its market power for inpatient services in seven mostly rural Northern California areas where it is the only or dominant hospital to bind insurers in four other communities where it has competition.

That allowed Sutter to overcharge for its own services, the lawsuit alleged, and caused nearly $400 million in insurance premium overcharges to the plaintiffs between 20112017. Five companies provided the health insurance: Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California, Aetna, United Healthcare, and Health Net.

The law allows triple damages if the plaintiffs win against Sutter Health, meaning a potential award of $1.2 billion.

The named plainti s are four people who paid health insurance premiums and two companies that paid premiums for their employees since 2011, but the class includes any individuals or companies in the same position across much of Northern California.

The plainti s’ attorneys estimate that includes 3 million patients and employers. The system operates 24 hospitals with more than 12,000 doctors and 16,000 nurses.

It’s the second such law-