Hard times indeed must have fallen upon the lawyers of the American mid-west, for news reaches us of a possible class-action lawsuit filed in Chicago that stretches the bounds of what people in more gainful employment might consider actionable. It seems our legal eagles have a concern over the insufficient dimensions of their wood, and this in turn has caused them to apply for a class action against Home Depot and Menards with respect to their use of so-called nominal sizing in the sale of lumber.
If you have ever bought commercial lumber you will no doubt understand where this is going. The sawmill takes a piece of green wood straight from the forest, and cuts it to a particular size. It is then seasoned, either left to dry out and mature in the open air or placed in a kiln to achieve the same effect at a more rapid pace. This renders it into the workable lumber you expect to use, but causes a shrinkage of the wood that since it depends on variables such as moisture can not be accurately quantified. Thus a piece of wood cut by the sawmill at 4 inches square could produce a piece of seasoned lumber somewhere near 3.5 inches square. It would thus be sold as having only a nominal size of 4 inches This has been the case as long as commercial lumber has been produced, we’d guess for something in the region of a couple of centuries, and is thus unlikely to be a surprise to anyone in the market for lumber.
So, back to the prospective lawsuit. Once the hoots of laughter from the entire lumber, building, and woodworking industries have died down, is their contention that a customer being sold a material of dimension 3.5 inches as 4 inches is being defrauded a valid one? We are not lawyers here at Hackaday, but we’d expect the long-established nature of nominal lumber sizing to present a tough obstacle to their claim, as well as the existence of other nominally sized products in the building industry such as rolled steel joists. Is it uncharitable of us to characterise the whole escapade as a frivolous fishing exercise with the sole purpose of securing cash payouts? Probably not, and we hope the judges in front of whom this is likely to land agree with us.
If you have any thoughts on this case, especially if you have a legal background, we’d love to hear from you in the comments.
Sawn lumber image: By Bureau of Land Management (Oregon_BLM_Forestry_10) [CC BY 2.0].
Well, if this is a mind-bender, don’t try and figure out which part of 1/2″ conduit is 1/2″.
There are a lot of stupid people and some of them like to make money….
Look at all the people that think chocolate milk comes from brown cows… maybe we should explain on the carton how chocolate mik made. If you are working with lumber then read and find out all you can before make anything.
cjs.
This just seems to be a case of product shrinkage. There is no other excuse for sizes reducing over the years (which seems to be the case looking at the comments). It seems to me that now they can control the finished product better, they are producing sizes closer to the minimum allowed (which they seem to have decided themselves).
As for the case, it depends on the wording of how it was sold. Did they imply it was 2″x4″ exactly? 1.5″x3.5″ would round to 2″x4″ anyway.
In the UK/Europe (and most of the rest of the world that historically used imperial) sizes have been “metricised”, that is sold as the nearest metric sizes to the old standard imperial sizes. So 2″x4″ is sold as 50mmx100mm, and what you get is pretty bang on (it seems we have better consumer rights here, and a weights and measures act).
I work as an engineer (in the UK), and our products are sold all over the world. I really hate working to american sizes, because there is no consistency. For pipe, the nominal size will either related to the OD or ID depending on the size, and the difference from nominal is not consistent. You may be able to remember this if you work with american sizes everyday, but most people need to keep referring to a table.
Unfortunately, only precision pipe/tube is fully consistent due to the amount of american/imperial/”metricised” sizes still sold here.
Proper definition:
Tube: Sold by OD, OD stated is maximum, and minimum is defined by tolerance.
Pipe: Sold by ID, not 100% sure on tolerances as mainly buy tube, and many places don’t stock (true) pipe even though they have a “Pipe and Tube” section.
Could we all just agree on a standard for everything a stick to it. Yes, there will be a few years of pain, but after that it will be much better. Rather than the gradual change, which is many, many years of pain, and still a long way to go.
I don’t know about suing these companies over the dimensions of their boards. It’s pretty much been the norm for longer than those companies have even been around. Why should they be punished for that?
On the other hand I don’t know about Menards but if Home Depot ever tries to advertise their 2x4s as being straight… Unless they are talking about their most expensive cut of treated lumber I’d argue for jail time!
This “nominal sizing” must be murica thing. At least here in Finland, 2×4″ truly is 50x100mm, 2×2″ truly is 50x50mm. “Fine sawed” 2×4″ is 48x98mm, 2×2″ is 48x48mm. So at least in here is one thing where they have not figured out how to cheat customers.
This so stupid. Just read
http://www.woodcentral.com/woodworking/forum/archives.pl/bid/1107/md/read/id/322291/sbj/when-and-why-did-a-2×4-become-a-1-1-2-x-3-1-2/
I should known better as I know 2×4’s are not. Anyway, built shelves into a closet in the office. The supports were 1×2’s (1.5x.75). Made the side supports 10.75 inches to cover 11.5 inches, leaving the side support a half inch shorter than my 1×12 shelf. ???????????????? which is of course .75×11. Smh