Headline today from Reuters, “Lawsuit saying Home Depot tricks buyers of 4X4 lumber is deep-sixed“.
The plaintiff, Mikhail Abramov, sued Home Depot because a “4×4” piece of lumber doesn’t measure 4 inches by 4 inches. It is only approximately 3.5 inches by 3.5 inches which any middle school kid who’s ever taken a shop class knows. That’s been a standard designation over a hundred years. If you don’t know why the “deceiving” dimensions, it’s because the wood is cut wet (containing water for those who don’t know what wet, is) and the wood fibers shrink (fibers contract together for those that don’t know what shrinking, is) when the lumber is dried.
The amazing part of the judgement is that the judge, Sharon Johnson Coleman, of Chicago (go figure) dismissed the case “without prejudice“, which means shyster Abramov can refile the lawsuit. Her oh so well reasoned judgement for “without prejudice” is because the label was “4×4” and it didn’t show a dimensions of inches.
What if the lumber was labeled with a dimension? According to the judge the retarded plaintiff might have had a case against Home Depot because the lumber was less than 4 inches on a side.
If we follow down the rabbit hole of the brilliant legal argument of Judge Coleman, everything that has a unit of measure will also need to have a TOLERANCE in order to ward off a lawsuit for “deceptive” marketing. What if you bought a 16 ounce bottle of water and it only contained 15.999 ounces? Is that “deceptive” labeling? Sounds like a good lawsuit to me as the bottle stated 16 ounces. 15.999 is less than 16 last time I looked. We now have precedence thanks to Judge Coleman. What if you were on a diet program and the bottle contained 16.001 ounces and you didn’t lose weight, can you sue? Again we have precedence for “deceptive” marketing thanks again to the well reasoned logic of Judge Coleman.
How far will we need to go, to define these measurements? Will we need to specify the temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure at the time of the measurements? A simple tolerance isn’t good enough. Most material expand at higher temperatures. Volumes of products can vary with barometric pressure. Even the weight of something as simple as a bag of flour will vary with changes in humidity. Will the location of measurement need to be defined? Gravitational forces vary across the surface of the earth which will affect a weight measurement.
In my book, both the plaintiff and the judge are RETARDED.