Law note · Hawaii

Hawaii Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act, private injunctive relief

cite Haw. Rev. Stat. Sec. 481A-4 stage IMMINENT commencement not set reviewed 2026-08-27

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.

What it asks of an app

  • 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.

When LexLint raises it

Declared activities: crawls_web, trains_models, deploys_chatbot, automated_outreach

Primary source: official Hawaii Revised Statutes text, Hawaii State Legislature

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