Horne
PHOENIX (Legal Newsline) - Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne announced a lawsuit on Monday against a Phoenix-area firearms dealer and its owners for alleged consumer fraud.
The lawsuit, filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, alleges that Lancaster Arms LLC, owned by co-defendants Marsha Durda and Chester Durda, defrauded consumers by failing to provide promised services and merchandise to dozens of customers between February 2009 and September of this year.
"Protecting consumers is one of the most important jobs of this office," Horne said. "Businesses such as the one named in this lawsuit cannot be allowed to make promises to customers and not deliver on those promises. The problem is made even worse when, as in this case, some customers made advance payments with the expectation that they would get either merchandise or services in return, and instead they got nothing.
"The legal action requests that the court order the business to make restitution, pay penalties, and prevent it from defrauding additional consumers."
Lancaster Arms allegedly claimed to some consumers on the Internet and through personal contact by Chester Durda that the company sold weapons, parts and accessories and that it provided weapon kit assembly services to consumers who sent their kits to the company. In addition, Lancaster Arms allegedly represented that some of its weapons were subject to its "Limited Life Time Warranty." The company allegedly failed to ship merchandise consumers paid for, failed to repair weapons under warranty and failed to provide refunds.
In addition, the lawsuit alleges that Lancaster Arms failed to assemble weapons kits sent to it by consumers and failed to return the un-assembled kits to the consumers or provide refunds.
The lawsuit seeks an injunction that will prohibit the defendants from engaging in any further unlawful acts and civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation. The lawsuit also seeks to require the defendants to restore property and money to consumers and to reimburse the state's court costs and other related expenses.