Dive Brief:
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Lumber Liquidators, under fire for allegedly selling Chinese-made laminate flooring that contains unhealthy levels of formaldehyde, has been slapped with five class-action lawsuits.
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Among their other complaints, the most recent plaintiffs—national consumer rights firm Hagens Berman, who filed in San Francisco—have claimed the home testing kits the distributor provided to consumers concerned about indoor air quality are “unreliable” and “bogus” and are “designed to under-report the formaldehyde levels in the composite flooring.”
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The class-action complaint filed in Federal Court in California also alleged that the company knew the products it sold contained unsafe levels of formaldehyde in the glues that bind the layers of laminate flooring together.
Dive Insight:
Lumber Liquidators, which has said it supplied more than 10,000 customers with the home test kits, said in a statement that it “intend[s] to defend ourselves vigorously against the claims.”
In the meantime, the flooring retailer’s sales dipped by 12.8% in March after CBS’ 60 Minutes aired a segment about the unsafe materials. Still, the company’s fist-quarter earnings were up 5.6% compared with the first quarter of 2014.
