Lawsuit: Home Depot Selling 4x4s That Aren’t 4 Inches By 4 Inches! Everyone Else: They Aren’t Supposed To Be, Moron.

Home Depot and Menard's face the dumbest class action claim ever.

By JOE PATRICE

Jun 22, 2017 at 12:04 PM
287SHARES(Via publicdomainpictures.net)

Home Depot and Menard’s are facing class-action lawsuits — at least until the Supreme Court bans class actions altogether next Term — that the 4×4 boards both retailers have been peddling to the public for years aren’t really 4 inches by 4 inches. In fact, they’re substantially off, generally measuring 3 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches!

The only problem with this lawsuit is that everybody who ever built anything already knew that 3 1/2″ by 3 1/2″ is the industry standard memorialized in multiple government regulations. This is what happens when you start selling construction materials to weekend warriors who watched two episodes of Chip and Joanna and fancy themselves carpenters.

In fact, if retailers started selling boards that were 4 inches by 4 inches, they’d actually be useless because they wouldn’t match up with all the other standardized materials that assume the board will be 3 1/2″ by 3 1/2″. Since the point of a board is less “to get as much wood as possible” and more “to keep your house from falling over,” it’s probably good that Home Depot and Menard’s are doing this.

That’s what separates this from the infamous Subway “footlong” lawsuits. In those suits, a company affirmatively advertised the size of its bread and on occasion (Subway said rarely, the plaintiffs said routinely) delivered shorter sandwiches. That didn’t really impact how much pedophile-thinning goodness they’d jam into the bread, but it’s not like Subway had to call these things “footlongs” and run a bunch of commercials with telestrated rulers. They could have called these “MegaGrinders” and no one would have cared. Once they explicitly made their size the crux of their advertising pitch, they took on the additional burden of living up to that.

But the name “4×4” isn’t an advertisement, it’s anachronistic shorthand. Much like the “Quarter Pounder” burger — which restaurants generally note specifies “pre-cooked” weight — the old-school way of making boards involved taking 4″ by 4″ green boards that would then shrink to something not unlike the size of today’s boards. Now the technology is better and lumber can be reliably turned out at the 3 1/2″ by 3 1/2″ size that builders expect. This is like suing Apple because iPhones aren’t rotary so you can’t really “dial” someone. Yeah, we get it… we’re still going to call it dialing.
Unfortunately, the retailers will probably end up settling these and adding a disclaimer in fine print explaining the actual size. It’s just cheaper to give into this sort of suit than fight it, and that’s why there’s a frenzy of terrible “size” suits out there right now. The problem is the frivolous suits run the risk of poisoning the well against the serious ones. Sellers have been shorting their customers since the invention of the market. Sometimes “size” suits are cash grabs by attorneys trying to turn the vagaries of packaging into a quick settlement. Other times they’re public-service suits calling out a manufacturer for systematically shorting buyers to cut back on costs. This lawsuit is, in a word, “stupid.” But don’t let it become the automatic stand-in for every case about measurements you run across.

Each case should be measured on its own merits.

I really need to stop ending articles with bad puns like that.

Home Depot, Menards face lawsuits over lumber size description [USA Today]

Apple Settles iPod nano Scratch Lawsuit With Customers



Credits: Trusted Reviews

By Gordon Kelly
February 5, 2011

So what have you won...?

And they say lawsuits drag on forever…?!

A mere ”’three years”’ have passed (yes, that’s irony) since fed up customers took Apple to court over its easily scratched first generation iPod nano and now we at last got a result: $25. Big whoop.


Now as with any legal issue the documentation and caveats are extensive but I’ve tracked this down from the FAQs which should help put it in a nutshell:

“The settlement covers uncoated First Generation iPod nanos. These iPod nanos were first sold beginning in September 2005, and have a black or white plastic front and a stainless steel back. To determine if your First Generation iPod nano is uncoated and is covered by the settlement, click here to enter the full Serial Number of your iPod nano and Control #, if you have it. The Serial Number appears on the stainless steel backplate of your iPod nano. You will receive a response informing you whether your iPod nano is covered by the settlement. To be entitled to a payment under the settlement, you must have experienced scratching of your iPod nano that impaired your use or enjoyment of your iPod nano.”

For those with long memories, you may recall Apple actually tried to slide out of this one by bundling covers with these nanos shortly after release but ultimately this hasn’t cut it any slack. That said, how many of you can be bothered to go through the claim process is another matter entirely because 1. There’s a lengthy form involved and 2. The small print confirms the settlement ”hasn’t even been formally approved yet” (!). This will take place on 28 April 2009 so I suggest you hold off on any hefty paperwork until then as the deadline for submissions is 10 June.

For the record, Apple is paying the $4.5m in litigation expenses it has cost the opposition so far and the named plaintiffs will get a larger $2,500 each. Still, for three years of court hearings and the trouble of raising the $4.5m in the first place I have to admit I’d have probably let the scratches go – the bad publicity was enough.