Seventh Circuit Unties Jos. A. Bank False Advertising Class Action

An appeals court has upheld a lower court’s ruling that a plaintiff lacks the standing to pursue a Jos. A. Bank false advertising class action lawsuit regarding the sale prices of shirts that he bought.

According to the original class action lawsuit complaint, Patrick Camasta had taken advantage of a sale that allowed a customer to buy one shirt and get two of equal or lesser value for a total of six shirts. However, he claimed that he had been misled because the shirts regularly appeared on sale. However, the Seventh Circuit thought differently.

Although he specifically cited a section of Illinois consumer rights laws not linked to fraud, the justices decided that in fact his claims needed to meet a higher standard. The fact that he had receipts did not satisfy the Rule 9(b) pleading standards of details regarding the advertisements that he saw and that he “provided insufficient evidence to show that the claimed sales practice employed by Joseph A. Bank was part of a general” company-wide activity.

Instead, they wrote that “Camasta did not claim that he was denied the terms or pricing he saw advertised or that he did not receive the shirts he selected. He does not claim that there was anything about the shirts themselves that made them defective or caused him to change his opinion about their value.” As such, the retailer had not engaged in false advertising based on the evidence provided to them. In order to state a claim, the decision notes, a person must suffer actual damages unless there is a statutory right cited in the complaint.

Further, the justices did not keep a New York settlement between Jos. A. Bank and the state attorney general because although an agreement was in place, as with most settlements the company did not admit wrongdoing. They also noted that since Camasta and his class action attorneys had failed to adequately describe the advertisements that he relied on, that there was also no link to the New York stores’ practices.

However, the retailer has been the target of class action lawsuits before. Many cite the statement made by the New York Attorney General that described the clothes as “perpetually ‘on sale.'”

Information regarding the plaintiffs’ class action attorneys was unavailable at the time of publishing.

The Jos. A. Bank False Advertising Class Action Lawsuit is Patrick Camasta v. Jos. A. Bank Clothiers Inc., Case No. 13-cv-2831 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.