Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
Companies often invest a lot of money in the products they sell, especially new products that have recently been released. They spend money on advertising and they sometimes train employees in retail stores to conduct demonstrations of their new product.
One company that recently launched a new product and talked it up in Home Depot stores is Rust-Oleum Corp. and their product was Restore. Restore was sold as a liquid armor coating that could be applied to wooden decks or room-swept concrete surfaces. According to a recent class action lawsuit though, Restore did not act as the protective coating it was advertised to be. Instead, the product allegedly peeled off surfaces, leaving them exposed.
The lawsuit was filed by Ulbardo Fernandez, who purchased the product at Home Depot. He alleges that Restore was advertised as being a “smart alternative” to replacing decks and concrete. Fernandez allegedly decided to purchase Restore as a result of the advertisement he saw for it in Home Depot.
A Home Depot employee asked him what color he wanted the Restore to be and performed a coloring process on each of the 10 buckets Fernandez had selected. Because Restore is not ready for the consumer to use until a Home Depot employee performs the processing, the retailer was acting as an agent of Rust-Oleum when it sold the product. For this reason, Home Depot has been included as a defendant in the recent lawsuit.
Fernandez alleges that he applied the product to the concrete surface of his garage. He alleges that the product appeared to have been perfectly applied and he then decided to apply it to the broom-swept concrete surface around an outside portion of his home. He bought more Restore and applied a second coat to the concrete surface, but a couple months later, he noticed that the coating in the outside area was peeling and dislodging. A few months after that, he also noticed that there was peeling and cracking in the coating in his garage.
He went back to Home Depot to buy more Restore, but was informed by a Home Depot employee that the product had been removed from Home Depot’s shelves and returned to Rust-Oleum. According to the lawsuit, Home Depot had decided to do this as a direct result “of the many similar complaints Home Depot received from its customers who had purchased and applied Restore”.
The lawsuit alleges that “By virtue of Restore’s material defect at the time of plaintiff’s purchases and the false, misleading and incomplete representation, depictions and instructions on the Restore buckets’ packaging labels, the defendants breached the implied warranty of Restore’s fitness for the particular purposes for which plaintiff requires Restore”.
Because Fernandez was far from the alone in experiencing problems with Restore, he was able to file a lawsuit and attempt to recover damages for consumers who otherwise would have no way to recover their losses on the product. The lawsuit has asked the court to certify a class of all plaintiffs who purchased Restore in a retail store in the state of New York, as well as a subclass of consumers who purchased the product in Home Depot stores.Our Chicago Rust-Oleum and Restore Liquid Armor Coating Defect attorneys are investigating this defective product and considering filing a class action against Rust-Oleum and Home Depot. Contact us through the side of this blog or at 630-333-0333 if you have suffered damages as a result of purchasing and using Restore.Our Chicago class action lawyers near Lisle and Wheaton bring class action, privacy law and individual consumer rights lawsuits. We bring suit for many types of class action lawsuits for consumer fraud issues and for unpaid overtime, junk fax, privacy rights violations, property damages due to pollution, false advertising and other claims. Super Lawyers has selected our Kane, DuPage and Cook County class action lawyers as among the top 5% in Illinois. Our Chicago class action attorneys only collect our fees if we win or settle your case. For a free consultation call us at our toll free number 630-333-0333 or contact us on the web by clicking here.