A Florida district court has dismissed a class-action lawsuit against Dometic that alleged that its RV refrigerators corrode, leak gas, and pose a fire risk, according to Reuters news service.
Dometic is a popular brand among RVers because the fridges hook up to a vehicle’s gas absorption and are lauded as being more energy efficient, according to outdoor website SNEWSnet.com.
Plaintiffs filed the lawsuit not based on fires or damage to property, but for paying a “premium price that they otherwise would not have paid” had they known about the defect, SNEWSnet.com reported. Models named in the lawsuit are all fridges, not coolers. They cost anywhere from $500 to more than $4,000, and are typically bought through RV dealers and makers, the website reported.
In rejecting the motion for class-action status, U.S. District Judge Robert Scola said the plaintiffs did not show how they can identify class members, given that Dometic sells the refrigerators to RV manufacturers and dealers and does not have records of the consumers who buy the RVs, according to Reuters. To certify a class, plaintiffs must show they have a manageable process for identifying class members, and they failed to do that, the judge ruled.