Site airing complaints against Kane's shut down
By Brian Carroll -- Furniture Today, January 13, 2003
Pinellas Park, Fla. — Saying it had no other options, Kane's Furniture has filed a lawsuit against a Tampa man who set up a Web site for consumer complaints against the 14-store chain.
The retailer won a temporary court injunction last month shutting down the site, www.kanesfurniture.net, which had passed along hundreds of consumer complaints against Kane's to the Florida attorney general's office.
In late November, the attorney general filed a civil suit against Kane's, and the retailer counter-sued the AG's office.
"Legal action is not typical for Kane's," said Lisa Brock, a principal in Brock Communications and a spokeswoman for Kane's.
The suit against the Web site operator, Manny Gonzalez, is a "measure of last resort," she said. "It came to a point where we were backed into a corner."
The temporary injunction shutting the site down was issued by a Pinellas County circuit judge on Dec. 19. The Florida state attorney general's office said it soon will file a friend-of-the-court brief claiming the site's shutdown violates the operator's First Amendment free-speech rights.
Brock said Kane's believes the issue is trademark infringement, not free speech. She said the company is not seeking damages, as was reported in at least one Florida newspaper.
"We have a brand name we are trying to protect," she said. "We're living in an age of technology (which) makes it difficult to defend against threats to that brand equity."
On advice of counsel, Gonzalez said he wouldn't comment on the case.
Gonzalez registered the site through Tucows, a Toronto-based Internet service provider. The site, rife with misspellings, contains links to the attorney general's office in Florida and to the Better Business Bureau, and carried the title, "Who In The World Would Have Guessed There Is A Furniture Store From Hell? Well There Is And It's, Kane's Furniture."
In its suit filed in state circuit court in Orlando in late November, Florida's attorney general accused Kane's of deceptive trade practices, civil theft, failure to respond to complaints, sale of worthless warranties, and refusal to refund deposits, among other charges.
In the lawsuit, the attorney general's office said the 370 complaints that lead to its investigation as unprecedented for a retail business in the state. Jackie Dowd, assistant attorney general in charge of the case, could not be reached by press time.
Kane's has denied the state's charges.
According to Brock, Kane's has three motions pending in circuit court here — a motion to dismiss the state's case, a motion to disqualify the state attorney general's office for overstepping its bounds, and a motion to abate based on another suit.
Full-service, midpriced Kane's had $164 million in sales in 2001 and ranked No. 36 on Furniture/Today's list of Top 100 furniture stores.
