Home Depot, Menards Customers Cry False Advertising When They Learn “4x4s” Aren’t Actually 4×4
Talk to any contractor or carpenter — or most people who are reasonably familiar with home construction and repair — and they’ll tell you that a “4×4” piece of lumber is not actually four inches by four inches, and that it hasn’t been that way in any of our lifetimes. Yet some Home Depot and Menards customers are — literally — making a federal case out of this discrepancy, accusing the retailers of false advertising.
In two separate federal class-action lawsuits filed by the same attorney, shoppers accuse these two chains of selling “lumber products that were falsely advertised and labeled as having product dimensions that were not the actual dimensions of the products sold.”
The plaintiffs in the Menards complaint [PDF] are two customers who each purchased lumber at Menards stores in Illinois. One man purchased some “1×6” cedar planking and a piece of “4×4″ Douglas fir lumber, only to eventually find that these products’ real dimensions were .66″ x 5.25″ and 3.5″ x 3.5”, respectively. The second plaintiff claims to have been similarly “deceived and/or misled” about the true dimensions of a 4×4 post.
Those pesky 4x4s are also at the center of the Home Depot lawsuit [PDF], whose lead plaintiff says he relied on Home Depot’s advertising when purchasing this lumber.
While both lawsuits claim that the plaintiffs have been damaged by this alleged deception, neither complaint specifies what that damage may have been, other than getting slightly less wood than they expected. For instance, there is no mention of the plaintiffs being unable to finish a home renovation or of the purchased lumber being inadequate or of lower quality.
The lawsuits even acknowledge that lumber industry standards dictate that a nominal lumber dimensions are — and have been for nearly a century — slightly larger than the actual dimensions.
The plaintiffs do point out inconsistencies in the way the retailers advertise and market lumber. The Home Depot complaint notes that the retailer’s website includes actual, correct dimensions on some products, but not on others. Additionally, the lawsuits contend that retailers sell some “rough” cut wood products that are the full advertised dimensions.
In a memo in support of its motion to dismiss [PDF], the retailer argues that the plaintiffs “received exactly what they were supposed to receive – lumber that complies with applicable standards – and thus have not suffered an injury-in-fact.”
Interestingly, while Menards uses the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology minimum standards for dimensional lumber, going so far as to include the entire NIST 306-page handbook as an exhibit in the case, the retailer doesn’t mention where that NIST says it’s okay to just use nominal dimensions “if the… actual dimensions are prominently displayed to the customer, and the term ‘nominal’ or ‘nom’ is used in conjunction with any representation of nominal dimensions.”
At the same time, NIST’s Lumber Standard also states that “No inferences shall be drawn that the ‘nominal” sizes are dressed sizes.” So it’s not immediately clear if there is any legal obligation for hardware stores to communicate the actual size of lumber.
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