Facts

Nakedwines.com, Inc. is one of the largest online retail sellers of wine in the United States. As part of its business, Nakedwines offered consumers an opportunity to enroll in its "Wine Angel" and "Wine Genie" programs. The Wine Angel program was a monthly subscription that charged consumers $40 per month that they could use to purchase select wines from Nakedwines's website. The Wine Genie program was an automatically renewing monthly subscription that provided consumers with shipments of pre-selected wines. In September 2022, the Alameda, Napa, San Diego, Shasta, and Sonoma County District Attorneys filed suit against Nakedwines in San Diego County Superior Court.

PLAINTIFF'S CONTENTIONS: Plaintiff contended that the enrollment process for the defendant's Wine Angel and Wine Genie programs failed to include required prepurchase disclosures about automatically recurring charges; that defendant's post-purchase acknowledgments of these automatically recurring charges were insufficient; and that the defendant failed to provide a simple online method for customers to cancel their subscription and stop payments. Plaintiff contended the defendant's failures were violations of the Automatic Renewal Law.

DEFENDANT'S CONTENTIONS: Defendant denied any wrongdoing or liability.

Result

The parties reached a settlement agreement wherein the defendant agreed to pay $650,000 and to update and improve its sign-up process and disclosures to settle plaintiff's claims.