LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) – The shoe store chain Cole Haan has been accused of creating fictitious original prices on its products in order to make sale prices seem more impactful.
Teresa Adams filed a proposed class action on May 15 in Los Angeles federal court through attorneys at Carlson Lynch in San Diego. Their case charges Cole Haan with violating three California consume protection laws.
The proposed class is consumers who have purchased one or more Cole Haan-branded products from one of its outlet stores in California that was “deceptively represented as discounted from a false reference price.”
Products at outlet stores were either made for sale there or regular merchandise that is substantially outdated, the lawsuit said, so the original price is misleading because Cole Haan never offered the outlet-exclusive goods at the original price.
Outdated goods with an original price listing violate California and federal laws that give the store only 90 days to claim the product is discounted, the suit says.
U.S. District Court for the Central District of California case number 8:20-cv-00913