TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Legal Newsline) - Ashley Furniture claims a prolific class action lawyer is actually an extortion artist and is suing him for more than $100,000.
The lawsuit follows lawyer Spencer Sheehan's attempt to sue Ashley Furniture in federal court - a case he abandoned while Ashley paid an outside law firm $116,000 to prepare a motion to dismiss that was never filed.
Sheehan has made a name for himself - for better or worse - with his novel concepts of consumer deception that have created hundreds of lawsuits and have increasingly drawn the ire of judges. One judge has called him a "wrecking ball," while another has held him in contempt for filing frivolous claims against Starbucks and is deciding on a punishment.
And Ricola recently revealed that he finds some of his plaintiffs through Facebook advertising. His plaintiff in the Ashley Furniture case was Katie Grasty.
"In September 2022, Defendants collectively set their sights on AFI - a Wisconsin-based furniture manufacturer that literally had no dealings with Ms. Grasty," says the company's complaint, filed this month in a Florida state court.
Grasty bought a sofa from an Ashley licensee, not one of its retail stores operated by Ashley Global Retail. She purchased a warranty from another company that denied her claim a couple of years later when the sofa broke.
The suit against Ashley, filed in New York federal court, targeted the warranty. Ashley's in-house counsel told Sheehan that he would need to sue either the licensee or the warranty company, but he proceeded with his suit anyway and even filed a motion for class certification.
In communication with Ashley's lawyer, Sheehan told them to "go file your Rule 11 motion" for sanctions and that he faces threats like that "all day long."
Ashley's outside counsel explained why Ashley was not the proper defendant, but Sheehan continued with the case. After the case was pending for three months, he told Ashley that thanks to his "independent research" he would voluntarily dismiss the case for no compensation.
"Defendants failed to conduct even a cursory investigation before making their false allegations," the suit against Sheehan says.
"Given publicly available information and the documents already in (Sheehan and Grasty's) possession, they knew their claims against AFI were meritless and had no chance of success.
"Notwithstanding such knowledge, Defendants pursued the Grasty complaint maliciously and in bad faith in order to extort a financial settlement from AFI."
Days before the suit was filed, another of Sheehan's targets questioned his credibility in a motion to dismiss a lawsuit over cheese in Combos snacks. Mars Wrigley noted he has filed more than 500 class actions, including more than 200 against food manufacturers.
Since the contempt order in New York in August, he has filed 1.5 new cases per week, Mars says.