TL:DR
A federal judge denied Amazon.com's motion to dismiss an active class-action lawsuit accusing it of price-gouging during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Jan. 5, 2026, order from U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik reiterates that plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that Amazon exploited vulnerable consumers who turned to Amazon as a lifeline for consumer goods and food items during a public health crisis, accumulating huge and unjust profits.
The lawsuit, originally filed on April 21, 2020, claims Amazon engaged in unlawful price increases for essential goods by upwards of 1,800%. The complaint includes detailed price comparisons accusing Amazon of price-gouging, including the price of toilet paper increasing up to 1,044%, cold remedies up to 1,523%, and face masks up to 1,800%. The lawsuit seeks repayment to consumers for Amazon’s price-gouging, treble damages, and injunctive relief from the court barring Amazon’s overpricing. Judge Lasnik also found that certain of Amazon’s subpoenas were designed to harass and embarrass the class representatives and to pressure them into abandoning the case.
In quashing several of the subpoenas, Judge Lasnik stated that Amazon is trying to make this litigation as difficult, burdensome, and potentially embarrassing as possible for the named plaintiffs’ closest associates. The proposed class includes all persons who purchased any consumer good or food item deemed an emergency good, between January 31, 2020, and October 20, 2022, whose price was set at an unfair level. The precise identification of unfair prices and when they were in place will be refined after discovery and expert analysis.
My Thoughts 💭My Thoughts 💭
This is crazy!! I had no clue Amazon was getting sued for this. Will they just settle out of court and millions of Americans will get a $2 settlement check?
Price gouging is commie nonsense. Prices have to change to reflect the underlying resource scarcity.
In times of crisis some things become extremely scarce and it’s best to keep them from going to less valuable purposes.
Amazon didn’t break the global supply chain and create mass hysteria around a nasty cold virus. That’s what caused the crazy shortages, in combination with a bunch of crazy regulations that prevented adjustments in the supply chain.
Amen,
But no one cares. I want my cheap stuff. But I hate capitalism and blame free trade on every problem. I want my cheap Chinese crap but I don't want little kids to be exploited.
We are a bunch of willfully ignorant children.
"gouging laws" are one of the dumbest thing that somehow has been allowed to persist.
There is lots to say about it, but anyone who lives in hurricane prone areas has probably lived thru the effects of these laws.
Imagine you are a walmart dispatcher. You have regional warehouses that are stocked with goods, and you have 35 stores that have just been hit by a hurricane and everything is sold out....sounds easy right? Flood those stores goods....well not so fast. They are running on generator, staff are not all available, the roads are a mess, its going to take your trucks 3x as long to get to the stores....so well raise prices right?
You can't. Therefore there is ZERO incentive for you to "hurry up and rush products" back to the store.
"price gouging" translates to "I don't know what prices are or how they work"
I doubt the lawsuit will win, but it will probably be settled to get it to go away. The argument is a joke. Everyone was gouging, from Walgreens to Target to Amazon to Walmart and more. No one could find anything those first months in 2020.
Welcome to the age of litigation. The slightest of moves can cost you billions.
Exactly
I am not at all surprised by the abuse and power that large companies like Amazon have in all socio-economic areas at that time; it was very strong, while the one who suffered was the citizen who was locked up, confined, waiting to see the prompt solution to a virus that apparently was introduced by the system itself to lock us up and make the state look like our protector.