Law360, New York ( April 5, 2016, 12:00 PM EDT) -- New York federal courts have seen a flurry of new class actions focusing on the use of price comparisons in retail advertising. The common retail practice of comparing an item's current price with a higher "original," "regular" or "compare-at" price has come under increasing fire from consumers, who allege that the higher comparison price is often fictitious and misleads shoppers into believing they are getting a better bargain than they really are. Over the past two-and-a-half years, more than 60 putative class actions have been filed in courts across the country seeking relief under state consumer protection statutes for purchases made in reliance on these allegedly misleading price comparisons. And the Southern District of New York has seen five such class actions filed against five different retailers in the last two months alone....