Bed Bath & Beyond Lawsuit Shouldn’t Be Dismissed, Class Says

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A plaintiff suing Bed Bath & Beyond asked the court not to dismiss his claim, arguing that a recent Supreme Court decision plainly supports his standing to sue.

Plaintiff Edward Sweeney filed this Bed Bath & Beyond class action lawsuit earlier this year.

Sweeney takes issue with the terms and conditions that the company requires online customers to agree to in order to make purchases through the company’s website, saying those terms and conditions violate a New Jersey consumer protection law.

According to the class action lawsuit, these terms and conditions require that the customer waive practically all effective legal remedies against Bed Bath & Beyond.

Sweeney alleges that these waivers violate New Jersey’s Truth-in-Consumer Contract Warranty and Notice Act, which forbids companies from including language in their terms and conditions that force consumers to give up certain legal rights.

Bed Bath & Beyond moved in June to dismiss the plaintiff’s claim. The company argued in part that under the Supreme Court’s May decision in Spokeo v. Robins, Sweeney failed to allege a concrete injury and therefore does not have standing to sue.

Spokeo dealt partly with the question of whether a plaintiff can sue over what amounts to a bare technical violation of a statute, without alleging that the violation caused the plaintiff some sort of concrete harm.

Sweeney now counters that the harms he has alleged in this Bed Bath & Beyond class action lawsuit are clearly adequate to establish standing, even under Spokeo.

“[Bed Bath & Beyond] is only able to argue against concreteness because it ignores essentially everything Spokeo says about the topic,” Sweeney says.

The plaintiff points out that Spokeo specifically says that a risk of real harm can be a concrete-enough injury, and that the legislature’s judgment – in this case, the New Jersey legislature’s judgment in enacting the TCCWNA – goes a long way in determining what sorts of harm are concrete enough to sue over.

Sweeney’s Bed Bath and Beyond class action lawsuit was filed in tandem with another action raising similar claims against Toys R Us.

In both these actions, the terms and conditions at issue contain language purporting to absolve the retailers from any liability for selling dangerous or unsafe products or for any acts of third parties.

The language allegedly prohibits consumers from pursuing any claim for damages against the retailers.

Sweeney is seeking an award of $100 in statutory damages for each violation of the TCCWNA for himself and each potential Class Member. He also wants a court order requiring Bed Bath & Beyond to remove the contested language from its terms and conditions.

The plaintiff is represented by attorneys Seth R. Lesser, Fran L. Rudich and Michael H. Reed of Klafter Olsen & Lesser LLP; and by Jeffrey M. Gottlieb and Dana L. Gottlieb of Gottlieb & Associates.

The Bed Bath & Beyond Terms and Conditions Class Action Lawsuit is Edward Sweeney v. Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., Case No. 2:16-cv-01927, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.