Menards, Home Depot must explain why a 4x4 really isn’t
Menards and Home Depot are being accused of deceiving the lumber-buying public, specifically, buyers of 4x4 boards, the big brother to the ubiquitous 2x4.
The alleged deception: The retailers market and sell the hefty lumber as 4x4s without specifying the boards actually measure 31⁄ inches by 31⁄ inches.
The lawsuits against the retail- ers, would-be class actions and were filed within five days of each other in federal court for the Northern District of Illinois. Each suit seeks more than $5 million.
“Defendant has received significant profits from its false marketing and sale of its dimensional lumber products,” the action against Menards contends.
“Defendant’s representations as to the dimension of these products were false and misleading,” the suit against Home Depot alleges.
The retailers say the allega- tions are bogus. It is common knowledge and longstanding industry practice, they say, that names such as 2x4 or 4x4 do not describe the width and thickness of those pieces of lumber.
Rather, the retailers say, those are “nominal” designations accepted in government-approved industry standards, which also specify actual minimum dimensions — 11⁄ inches by 31⁄ inches for a 2x4, for example, and 31⁄ inches by 31⁄ inches for a 4x4. “Anybody who’s in the trades or construction knows that,” said Tim Stich, a carpentry instructor at Milwaukee Area Technical College.
Yevgeniy Turin of McGuire Law, the firm that represents the plaintiffs in both cases, disputes that the differences between nominal descriptions and actual dimensions are common knowledge.
“It’s difficult to say that for a reasonable consumer, when they walk into a store and they see a label that says 4x4, that that’s simply — quote unquote — a trade name,” Turin said.