BROOKLYN, N.Y. (Legal Newsline) - Attorneys continue to square off in a class action lawsuit brought against California's SquareTrade Inc. that alleges the company deceived consumers with a fraudulent protection plan sold on Amazon.com.
On March 20, attorneys for the San Francisco-based company responded to a request from attorneys for plaintiff Adam Starke, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of himself and others in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, to preserve a forensic copy of its storefront seen by consumers on Amazon’s website, saying it was not in possession of any storefront data found on the website.
The motions come in connection to a December 2016 class action suit brought by Starke, who alleges the company sold "fraudulent and deceptive marketing of protection plans for consumer electronics through SquareTrade’s ‘storefront' on Amazon.com.”
Starke says he suffered financial damage after being duped into purchasing a protection plan for a CD player purchased from SquareTrade via Amazon that was "vastly different and far more generous" from what he received when he tried to repair the player. He claims SquareTrade "sells protection plans for products on Amazon.com that are ineligible for coverage."
On March 15, Starke’s attorneys, Mark Schlachet of Law Offices of Mark Schlachet in Cleveland, Solomon N. Klein of Law Office of Solomon N. Klein in New York and Bradley J. Nash of Schlam Stone & Dolan LLP in New York, requested that a “forensic copy” of the company’s storefront be preserved as evidence.
Attorneys for SquareTrade responded that the company was not in possession of the storefront because Amazon is a third-party website with its own data.
"SquareTrade does not have -- and has never had -- possession, custody, or control of the Amazon website, the code by which Amazon Web pages are generated, or the servers that host Amazon’s website,” wrote SquareTrades’ attorneys in their response.
SquareFront attorneys further contend that the plaintiff is "overreaching" and is capable of accessing the storefront on Amazon.com of his own accord.
"If plaintiff wishes to shoulder the burden and expense of accessing the Amazon site and downloading all this data from Amazon, he is free to do so,” the attorneys noted.