AUSTIN, Texas—Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said last week that his office had secured a settlement over deceptive trade practices with the parent company of Hubble Contacts. The settlement was executed via the AG’s Consumer Protection Division and Vision Path Inc., Hubble’s parent company. The settlement calls for Hubble to pay $300,000 in civil penalties, $70,000 in attorneys’ fees, and $2,100 in restitution for certain consumers. The matter was handled by state district court in Bexar County, Texas, according to the AG’s announcement. Read the settlement statement here.

Hubble deceptively marketed its lenses by representing them as “high quality” even though they were manufactured using older technology that many other contact lens companies had moved away from, the Texas attorney general’s office said in a statement.
 
Furthermore, Hubble failed to verify consumers’ contact lens prescriptions with prescribers before filling orders, a violation of the Contact Lens Prescription Act that resulted in many consumers receiving the wrong contact lenses, the statement added, and also noted that “when consumers complained, Hubble wrongly blamed the prescribers.”
 
The Texas settlement comes just a few months after a federal settlement cost Hubble and Vision Path $3.5 million, as VMAIL reported.
 
In addition, the Texas settlement reflects a sustained effort by Texas Optometric Association and builds on the federal settlement following a years-long effort by the American Optometric Association (AOA), affiliates and doctors to report on unscrupulous contact lens sellers, according to AOA.