Colorado Business Litigation Lawyer Blog

Avanza stores that marketed primarily to Latino customers admitted in court on Friday, August 13, 2010 that it cheated its customers by charging them 10% more than the price at which its products were advertised.

Some people who had shopped at Avanza in 2008 noted that a sign at the register said “A great way to save—Plus 10% at the register!” When a customer specifically asked about the sign, she was informed that it meant she would save 10% on her purchases at the register. After all, what else could it have meant? When she inspected her receipt, she saw nothing indicating a 10% savings. That’s because Nash Finch Co., the owner of Avanza and other supermarkets and food distribution centers around the country, including Colorado, had intentionally adopted a pricing scheme that was in effect from 2008 until April, 2009, whereby customers were systematically charged 10% more than advertised prices.

Six of the customers sued the owner in 2008. Trial was to begin in Adams County on August 16, but the company caved-in and admitted its wrongdoing. Under the terms of the judgment, each plaintiff/shopper is to receive $700 because of the overcharges. Plaintiffs’ attorneys spent significant time during the discovery phase of the lawsuit. Nash Finch fought the case tooth and nail for almost two years. (I have not looked at the court pleadings, but I think it is a fair assumption that Nash Finch for all this time denied that it had done anything wrong until it finally agreed to the entry of judgment against it.) The judgment also requires that Nash Finch pay to plaintiffs’ attorney fees in a reasonable amount and court costs incurred in prosecuting the lawsuit.

This is another glaring example of just how low the ethics and morals of some businesses have sunk. It would be unfair to say that the store cheated only Latinos. Every customer who shopped there was equally cheated. Having shopped at an Avanza market, I am aware that most of the shoppers were Latinos, though and, in many cases, were people who were the most vulnerable because most considered Avanza to be their neighborhood grocery where they could buy the many types of products that simply are unavailable in other large supermarkets.

After all this, how can anyone ever again trust Nash Finch and the stores it owns? Will the person or persons who made the decision to cheat customers be held accountable by the criminal justice system? Don’t hold your breath!

Continue reading "Colorado Avanza Supermarket Cheats Customers, Admits Wrongdoing" »

A night mail handler at USPS entered a guilty plea in Colorado federal court on August 11, 2010 to two counts of theft by mail. According to a plea agreement, the man will be sentenced in November to one and a half to two years in prison and fined from $4,000 - $40,000.

The man admitted stealing from 100-150 packages a week since January 2008, valued roughly at over $283,000. His haul included CDs, DVDs and Victoria’s Secret lingerie, and came from large on-line sellers such as Amazon.com. He gave the lingerie to his wife and sold the stolen CDs and DVDs to Angelo’s Movies, Music and Gifts, reportedly one of the largest independent music stores in the Denver metro area. Receipts from Angelo’s indicated purchases from the man of 11,829 items valued at over $85,000. Owner Angelo Coiro said that the man was not asked where the merchandise came from. Coiro said he assumed the man owned a business, based on the random nature of the items sold.

Let’s say that over a less than two-year period someone offers to sell you a total of over 11,000 (yes, that’s thousand) random items. Would you at least wonder where this merchandise came from? Or would you just assume the merchandise must be owned by the seller? Or would you simply ask? Oh, and Angelo’s has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

Food for thought.

The City of Boulder, Colorado is a serene and much-loved university town nestled at the foot of majestic Rocky Mountain peaks. During the academic year it is home to over 27,000 CU undergraduates. Some unknown culprit or culprits continue to engage in the time-honored ritual of setting fire to sofas and other furniture left abandoned outdoors.

Boulder fire and other city officials, quite naturally, are deeply concerned and have taken steps to try and prevent the practice by imposing fines for abandoning furniture in yards and public ways.

City spokeswoman Sarah Huntley says, "When [couches] are left in public places that are frequented by people returning from parties or bars around 1 a.m., someone thinks it would be a good idea to light the couch on fire.” Armed with this knowledge, the logical step would appear to be to find out just who this “someone” is.

In its article reporting on the issue, dailycamera.com fails to mention whether or not anyone has ever been caught or charged with setting the fires. Logically, city police should set up surveillance on abandoned couches at about 1 a.m. Or, better yet, it would be a more permanent solution for the city simply to haul off the couches before they are set ablaze. Some enterprising students with a truck may even want to contract with the city to remove the furniture to the county dump. Any of these solutions should prove to be much less costly than having the fire department respond and douse the flames, and then haul away the furniture.

Or am I just a dreamer?

Read more "HOT" blogs:

"Man’s Prosthetic Leg Set on Fire," Colorado Business Litigation Lawyer Blog, posted 07/13/10

"The Scoop on Poop in Colorado," Colorado Business Litigation Lawyer Blog, posted 02/17/10

Here’s an article I wrote back in July. Before a decision was made whether or not to post it, the FDA advisory panel (a group of scientists) recommended by a split vote that Avandia be left on the market, pending a decision by the head of the FDA, which should be forthcoming. When her decision is made, I will write a follow-up.

How often have we read or watched media stories about greedy trial lawyers filing spurious class action lawsuits against big tobacco and other giants of American industry? And don’t we sometimes enjoy it immensely when we hear that some jury somewhere stiffed the dying-of-cancer plaintiff with a verdict in favor of the huge corporate defendant? After all, the person harmed should have known better than to have been suckered by the massive advertising campaign touting the safety of a deadly product.

Just when people felt they had reached a comfortable level of complacency on this issue, along comes SmithKline Beechman. Documents recently obtained by the New York Times allegedly show that SmithKline (now known as GlaxoSmithKline) actively hid from regulators and the public the fact that Avandia, a SmithKline diabetes drug known as rosiglitazone, was riskier to the heart than Actos, a competing drug manufactured by Takeda.

In 1999, SmithKline completed a secret study comparing the heart risk of the two drugs. The results clearly showed that Avandia was not safer and in fact may actually cause heart attacks. Researchers began discovering Avandia’s risk in 2007. Shortly thereafter, SmithKline admitted that it had known of the heart attack risk at least since 2005.

Instead of reporting their findings to drug regulators as they should have done, SmithKline apparently suppressed the results for eleven years. A recently-discovered 2001 email discloses that a SmithKline executive wrote that the study “was done for the U.S. business, way under the radar. Per Sr. Mgmt request, these data should not see the light of day to anyone outside of GSK.” A GSK spokesperson recently said the study’s results were not disclosed because they “did not contribute any significant new information.”

Do you get the picture now?