Attorney General Kathy Jennings, through her Consumer Protection Unit, has obtained a settlement with door-to-door pest control company Aptive Environmental, LLC (“Aptive”). The AG has filed the settlement in the Court of Chancery, requesting an order awarding the state $600,000 for Aptive’s multiple violations of Delaware’s consumer protection laws and directing that Aptive undertake specific actions to ensure that no violations of law will occur in the future.

“Aptive’s history of misleading customers with their sales practices and locking them into unwanted terms is equal parts shameful and unlawful,” said Attorney General Kathy Jennings. “That behavior is exactly the type of lawlessness that the Consumer Protection Unit was created to stop, and it’s what we intend to do here.”

For several years, and particularly during the summer months, Aptive has solicited Delaware homes with high pressure sales pitches, misrepresented the contents of their consumer contracts, and failed to disclose certain key provisions, including the imposition of a contract termination fee. Consumers were required to sign a contract copy appearing only on an iPad and often given no opportunity to review the contents, instead relying on a commissioned salesperson’s misrepresentations. Aptive is alleged to have committed multiple violations of three Delaware statutes: the Consumer Fraud Act, the Deceptive Practices Act, and the Home Solicitation Sales Act.

Consumers should be aware that the Delaware Home Solicitation Sales Act requires every Delaware citizen be free of, and protected from, high-pressure door-to-door sales tactics. Among other requirements, salespeople are required to prominently display an identification card obtained from the Department of Finance and are restricted to solicit between 9:00 am and 8:00 pm. Consumers must be furnished a complete copy of any contract as well as a notice of their right to cancel the contract within 3 business days.

Delaware consumers are also reminded to carefully review any contract before signing and obtain a full understanding of services to be provided and price. Obtaining quotes from competing providers can be a wise decision. Unscrupulous door-to-door commissioned salespeople may aggressively mislead consumers who are caught unprepared. Beware of salespeople who ask you to agree to a fee to cancel or terminate the contract – this fee is designed to keep you in a contract that you don’t want or to punish you for exiting it. It is always appropriate to tell a door-to-door salesperson that you are not interested and simply close the door.

A Newark man has been sentenced to prison for a 2022 incident where he assaulted a police officer and resisted arrest.

On July 24, Rodney Duffy, 39, was sentenced to 11 years in prison by a New Castle County Superior Court judge. The sentence follows Duffy’s guilty pleas to one count of Assault First Degree and one count of Resisting Arrest with Force.

“There is no justification whatsoever for the defendant’s brutal, impulsive, and callous actions,” said Attorney General Kathy Jennings. “Our thoughts are with the victim, whose injuries forced him to end a yearslong career in law enforcement. I’m grateful to the police and trial team who secured justice for his attacker.”

On December 13, 2022, the Newark Police Department received a call about Duffy from the Suburban Drive Acme, whose staff reported a shoplifting in progress. When the police officer who arrived tried to detain him, Duffy began assaulting the officer, hitting his head repeatedly, seriously injuring him, and attempting to remove the officer’s gun from its holster. Following the incident, the officer was forced to retire as a result of his injuries.

Attorney General Kathy Jennings today announced she and a coalition of 19 attorneys general and one city have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), challenging its rule that would weaken regulations designed to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in commercial equipment. HFCs are chemicals used for refrigeration and cooling that are up to 10,000 times more potent than the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide, and they are among the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions both in the United States and around the world. The EPA rule rolls back some of the existing deadlines under which industry has begun to move from using HFCs as refrigerant gases to refrigerants with less greenhouse effect, known as Global Warming Potential (GWP). This undermines EPA’s current regulations under the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act of 2020 (AIM Act), expressing the intent of Congress to phase out HFCs by approximately 85% by 2036. In the petition filed Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the coalition petition the Court to review EPA’s new rule because it is contrary to law and EPA fails to justify its change in position.

“It is abundantly clear by now that this Administration views the right of corporations to pollute to be unlimited and the right of Americans to fight back to be illegitimate,” said Attorney General Kathy Jennings. “Fortunately, it doesn’t matter what they think – this effort to destroy critical protections against climate change is illegal, and we’re going to stop it.”

HFCs are widely used in commercial, residential, and mobile cooling systems, such as air conditioning and refrigeration. Once deemed a safer alternative for the environment relative to ozone-depleting substances (chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs), which damage the earth’s ozone layer, HFCs were later discovered to pose a major threat to the climate. With greenhouse effects (or GWPs) hundreds to thousands of times higher than carbon dioxide over a hundred-year period, HFCs have been projected to contribute up to 0.5 degrees Celsius (about 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) to global surface warming by 2100 if they are not controlled. Because of this extreme potency, HFCs’ increasing share of emissions, and their relatively short lifespan in the atmosphere, reducing consumption and production of HFCs is particularly important for addressing climate change.

In December 2020, President Trump signed the Bipartisan AIM Act into law. The AIM Act provides a framework through which the United States will phase out the production and consumption of HFCs by about 85% by 2036. That law limits production and imports of HFCs in the U.S. to declining amounts of historic baseline levels — 60 percent today, declining to 30 percent in 2029, and 15 percent in 2036. The law requires EPA to help industry transition to a lower supply of these gases by setting limits for sectors with more readily available alternatives to protect costs and supply for those sectors that will take longer to transition. That’s what the prior Technology Transitions rule did: required specific sectors that use refrigerants to, when installing new equipment, install equipment that uses gases with lower GWP. For example, under the prior Technology Transitions rule, new remote condensing units — typically used to refrigerate food by retailers like supermarkets, bakeries, and conveniences stores — were limited to using refrigerants with 150 to 300 GWP, depending on the system, starting January 1, 2026. With EPA’s rollback, new remote condensing units could use refrigerants with 10 times greater global warming potential (up to 1,400 GWP) until January 1, 2032. There has been no showing that regulated industries were incapable of achieving the more aggressive goals of the Technology Transitions Rules.

If allowed to move forward, the rule will increase HFC emissions, accelerating the damage already threatening our planet from climate change. In Delaware, the most dramatic effect would come from sea level rise, beach erosion, flooding, coastal storms and the loss of farming and grazing land due to saltwater infiltration along the Delaware Bay. Further, by undermining the parallel reduction in HFC supply and demand, the rule threatens to cause shortages and price spikes in the HFC market that could be passed from retailers to consumers.

In the lawsuit, Attorney General Jennings and the coalition allege that EPA’s final rule is arbitrary and capricious and violates the AIM Act.

Joining AG Jennings in the lawsuit are the States of California, Washington, Colorado, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, and the City of New York.

In a win for the Delaware Department of Justice’s Investor Protection Unit, the Delaware Supreme Court has affirmed the Superior Court’s dismissal in Swan Energy, Inc., Brandon Davis, John Schiffner, and Cody Davis v. Investor Protection Unit of the Delaware Department of Justice.

The Investor Protection Unit (“Unit”) of the Delaware Department of Justice initiated an administrative enforcement action in 2020 against Swan Energy, Inc. and four individuals. The Unit alleged that the respondents operated a long‑running scheme to induce investors—including those in Delaware—to purchase risky, unregistered oil, gas, and mining securities. Several years into the administrative proceeding, the plaintiffs filed a separate court action seeking a declaration that the Unit’s administrative proceeding violated their constitutional rights to a jury trial and due process. The Superior Court dismissed their lawsuit, and the Delaware Supreme Court has now affirmed that dismissal, concluding that the Delaware Securities Act’s administrative enforcement framework is constitutional and does not violate jury‑trial or due‑process rights.

In its opinion, the Supreme Court held that enforcement actions initiated by the Investor Protection Unit of the Delaware Department of Justice may proceed administratively and would not require a jury trial. The Court also rejected the plaintiffs’ due‑process claim, finding it unripe as‑applied and insufficiently supported as a facial challenge, noting the absence of any statutory or regulatory defect applicable across all IPU proceedings.

“The Delaware Supreme Court’s decision reinforces the integrity and fairness of Delaware’s investor protection process,” said Attorney General Kathy Jennings. “The Investor Protection Unit’s mission is to safeguard the investing public from fraud and protect the integrity of our markets. The Supreme Court’s ruling affirms that our processes honor both the law and the constitutional rights of all parties involved.”

The judgment of the Superior Court is affirmed in full and the matter is expected to be remanded to DOJ’s Presiding Officer for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court’s opinion.

The Delaware Department of Justice, the City of Wilmington, and Wilmington Police Department jointly released body-worn camera (BWC) footage related to the June 24, 2026 officer-involved shooting (OIS) of Kadir Skinner near 24th & Carter Streets in Wilmington. Three officers’ BWC videos are being released.

• Officer 1
• Officer 2
• Officer 3

The footage begins shortly before each officer arrives at the scene and ends shortly after they return to their vehicles. The faces and names of witnesses and officers have been redacted pursuant to the DOJ’s legal and ethical obligations during an active criminal investigation. The footage is otherwise unaltered.

BWCs are worn on officers’ torsos, and by design automatically and constantly record video, but not audio, as part of a “buffering” period up to and until the time that the camera is activated. When a BWC is activated, it automatically retains any available footage and begins to record both video and audio from that point forward. As a result BWC video is typically silent when it begins.

The video is being disclosed as a matter of public interest. Although the OIS remains the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Division of Civil Rights & Public Trust (DCRPT), investigators have completed substantial early steps—including but not limited to key witness interviews, community canvasses, and family meetings—that may otherwise have been jeopardized by expedited disclosure. During the active investigation the DOJ cannot characterize the events, people, or objects captured in the video, nor disclose any other evidence. Consistent with DOJ policy, the officers will be identified and all evidence published as part of a fully-detailed public report and legal analysis following the investigation’s conclusion.

The DOJ continues to seek supplemental video, which may be submitted to publictrust@delaware.gov.