Zales Must Face Lifetime Warranty Class Action Lawsuit

A California federal judge has denied Zales’ attempt to dismiss a class action lawsuit asserting that the company does not honor its own warranty terms.

According to U.S. District Judge James Lorenz, the Zales customer who filed the class action sufficiently established that the jeweler had indeed violated its Zales Lifetime Diamond Commitment.

Zales asserted that the customer’s claims of false advertising should be dismissed, by stating that most consumers would not have been misled by the advertising around Zales’ terms of warranty.

However, Judge Lorenz determined that Zales had not sufficiently established that the claims should be dismissed because they provided insufficient documents to back up this argument.

Zales also argued that the customer who filed the Zales class action lawsuit lacked specificity in his claims. However, Judge Lorenz states that the allegations were specific enough, because the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure “requires only a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief, in order to give the defendant fair notice of what the claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.”

According to Judge Lorenz, the customer’s claims were sufficient to raise a right to relief above the level of speculation, asserting that all of the allegations in the complaint are true.

Judge Lorenz also said that the customer had sufficiently established that many reasonable consumers would have been misled by Zales’ warranty.

The Zales warranty class action lawsuit was filed by Gordon Lovette, who says that he purchased a diamond ring from Zales, doing business as Piercing Pagoda, in 2008.

At the time he bought the ring, Lovette says he also purchased a Zales Lifetime Diamond Commitment, which is a warranty for repair and replacement of the diamond, if the ring is brought in for semiannual inspections.

According to Lovette, he brought the ring in for inspection every six months, per the service terms. He says that in 2018, the diamond became loose in its setting, and he requested a free repair under the terms of his warranty. However, he was allegedly refused the service and was told that loose settings were only covered under an extended warranty.

Allegedly, Lovette was told that unless he “immediately paid to have the setting corrected, it was voiding [his warranty] because the diamond was loose in its setting.” The employee reportedly refused to “sign off on [Lovette’s] bi-annual inspection … because his diamond was loose in its setting.”

Lovette says that had he known that Zales would violate the terms of its own warranty, he would not have purchased the ring or would not have paid as much as he did for it. He claims that he and many other customers were financially injured by Zales’ practices.

Lovette is represented by Todd M. Friedman, Adrian Bacon, Meghan George and Thomas Wheeler of the Law Offices of Todd M. Friedman PC.

The Zales Jewelry Repair Services Class Action Lawsuit is Lovette v. Zale Delaware Inc., et al., Case No. 3:18-cv-02727-L-RBB, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.

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