Judge Rules Suit Against Furniture Outlet Over Pricing Needs More Facts
A woman suing household furniture company Stitch Industries Inc., alleging she was lured by company advertising into paying prices for items she was deceived into believing were offered at discounts for a limited time, will have to shore up parts of her lawsuit, a judge has ruled.
Former Los Angeles resident Christina Thiele-Yancy's proposed Los Angeles Superior Court class-action lawsuit allegations include false advertising, intentional and negligent representation. She seeks unspecified compensatory damages, restitution and punitive damages. The pleadings include multiple color copies of ads she maintains are misleading.
On Tuesday, Judge Elaine Lu declined to dismiss the entire case as urged by Stich lawyers. However, the judge ruled that the plaintiff's attorneys must provide more details to support their client's claims for breach of contract and breach of express warranty. Lu gave them 30 days to file an amended complaint.
In her suit brought last Dec. 18, Thiele-Yancy alleges that Stich advertising was misleading.
"While there is nothing wrong with a legitimate sale, a fake one ... with made-up regular prices, made-up discounts and made-up expirations is deceptive and illegal," the suit states. "This includes statements falsely suggesting that a product is on sale when it actually is not."
Stitch Industries sells furniture and home décor products online through the Joybird brand and website joybird.com. The website lists alleged regular prices along with purported limited-time discounts from those regular prices, according to the suit. However, the listed regular prices are not accurate because the company's products are routinely sold for less money, the suit alleges.
"The purported discounts defendant advertises are not the true discount the customer is receiving and are often not a discount at all," the suit states.
The ostensible short-term sales prices also are untrue because the items are repeatedly set at those amounts, the suit states.
Thiele-Yancy, now 40, spent thousands of dollars in September 2021 buying an ottoman, sectional and sofa through the company website, believing that she was getting a steep discount and that she only had a short amount of time to make a decision, the suit states.
"These reasonable beliefs are what caused Ms. Thiele-Yancy to buy from defendant when she did," the suit states.
In truth, the listed regular prices were not the true regular prices, the purported discounts were false and there were no real time limitations, the suit alleges.
"Had defendant been truthful, Ms. Thiele-Yancy and other consumers like her would not have purchased the products or would have paid less for them," according to the suit.
