A mattress company faced no-injury class actions seeking statutory penalties under the New Jersey Truth-in-Consumer Contract, Warranty and Notice Act (TCCWNA), with plaintiffs challenging the wording of terms of use and other customer-facing documents. Our firm represented the company in both state and federal courts regarding who qualifies as an ""aggrieved consumer"" with standing to seek penalties under the statute.
Plaintiffs did not allege that they had ever read the documents in question, let alone that they had ever been harmed or affected by them in any meaningful way. On April 16, 2018, the New Jersey Supreme Court resolved the issue once and for all in its decision in David Spade v. Select Comfort Corp., confirming that a consumer is not “aggrieved” if he or she has not “suffered some form of harm as a result of the defendant’s conduct.” The question of what “aggrieved consumer” means under the TCCWNA had been certified to the New Jersey Supreme Court by the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
