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The fir flies in federal court!
Evergreen East, a Wisconsin-based Christmas tree co-op that bills itself as “New York’s best Christmas tree sellers,” says Home Depot, Whole Foods and their supplier conspired last year to scam Big Apple buyers by calling the cheaper Canadian firs Fraser firs – the Cadillac of evergreens, according to court documents.
Frasers are famous for the two-tone color of their needles, dark green on top with a silvery underside.
The Manhattan Federal Court complaint alleges that during the 2019 Christmas season, retailers “potentially sold hundreds of thousands of balsam firs that they intentionally mislabeled and falsely advertised as Fraser firs.”
The Frasers are sold on the sidewalks of Manhattan by patrons of Evergreen’s mom and pop store for over $ 179 for a 6 footer and $ 699 for a 12 footer.
Fugazi firs sold by major retailers – which came from North Carolina-based supplier Bottomley Evergreen – start at just $ 80 for a 6-footer, said Evergreen East president Kevin Hammer, 64.
He said the fictitious firs crippled competition – and fooled unsuspecting tree buyers.
“I have been doing this for 47 years. We’re not a pimple on Bottomley’s ass, ”raged the Bensonhurst Hammer. “We are a cooperative that has been retailing trees exclusively in New York City since 1974.”
Hammer said New Yorkers want what they pay for.
“Home Depot is not Canal Street where you buy a fake Gucci bag. People go there and see a tree from Canada and [don’t realize] it’s the second or the third rate, ”he says.
He also told the Post that corrupt Christmas wholesalers also harvest trees earlier than they should and often ship them from Canada to North Carolina so they can falsely label them as grown in North Carolina. .
Hammer says his trees are fresher, of the higher quality Fraser variety, and are actually grown in North Carolina – and the higher price testifies to that.
“You pay for a Gucci bag – and you get a Gucci bag!” he said.
Bottomley Evergreen boasts that its farms are located “in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and western Virginia” and have “been providing top quality Fraser Christmas trees” since opening in 1990. .
But the complaint claims Bottomley imported 100,000 or more Canadian balsams in 2019 “and bleached those trees through its retail partners.” The defendants knew they labeled, marketed, advertised and sold balsam fir which was falsely referred to as Fraser fir.
Hammer told the Post that Bottomley had made Home Depot and Whole Foods “a part of a scam.”
The lawsuit, filed in January, alleges that on December 16, 2019, Home Depot “received a written notice that it was selling falsely labeled Bottomley Christmas trees.”
Home Depot ‘Took No Quick Repair Efforts’ To End Fir Tree Fraud, Prosecution Charges Add Home Renovation Titan “Continued to sell counterfeit trees for days, and possibly throughout the selling season.”
Evergreen has struggled in recent years to secure an adequate supply of high-quality Fraser fir and, due to the scarcity of these trees, has had to pay a premium for them, which has drastically reduced its profit margins, the lawsuit says. .
The action for “intentional false advertising” seeks unspecified damages, attorney fees and that the defendants “consider every Christmas tree they sold in 2019 tagged or sold as Fraser fir” . Evergreen wants the profit made “for every tree sold that the defendants cannot prove was in fact a Fraser fir”.
Home Depot spokeswoman Margaret Watters Smith called the Christmas kerfuffle “an isolated labeling error.” “Once we saw it, we worked with the supplier to verify the proper labeling of future deliveries,” she said.
Lawyers for Whole Foods and Bottomley filed motions to dismiss, essentially claiming customers couldn’t see the forest from the Christmas trees. They argued that the complaint did not prove “that the alleged mislabelling of the trees in any way influenced the public’s purchasing decision.
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