Truth all comes out in the wash in court

Judge asks claimant to try on designer garments he said shrank after he left them into Trim laundry to be cleaned

A MAN who claimed that clothes he left into a laundry “shrank and the colours ran” was asked by a judge to put on some of the clothes in the court witness box so that she could see whether his claim could be sustained.

James Andrews, Castle Abbey, Trim took a case against The Laundry Basket, Loman Street, Trim and sought €1,000 damages at the Small Claims Court at Navan on Friday. The owners of the laundry Frances and James Mitchell denied the claims and said that they had a disclaimer displayed in their premises.

Mr Andrews said in evidence that he had left in a bag of clothes to be washed and the items would have cost €1,500 when new and were two years old. They had also been washed on a previous occasion. He had left the clothes in on 10th November last and the charge for washing was €38.50. He had not seen any disclaimer in the premises. In the witness box the witness read out washing instructions from some of the labels. Judge Marie Quirke then asked him to put on one of the jacket which he said was “short” following laundry. The judge then asked him to go outside the courtroom to check labels on 14 items.

He said items had “shrunk and the colours ran”. On one item of Meath GAA strip there had been “crinkling on the yellow stripes”. The items left in included a Tommy Hilfiger jacket, leggings which cost €45 new and a Goff’s jacket which cost €220 last year. Some other items “kind of shrank”, he said.

He had left clothes in at another premises in Trim, Castle Cleaners. However, Ms Mitchell said from the body of the court that this was a dry cleaners, not a laundry.

In her evidence Ms Mitchell said that Mr Andrews had phoned her and said items had shrunk “by 2-3 sizes”. He had come into the premises with the bag of clothes “but he never held up any of the items against him or tried anything on”.

She and her husband were 23 years in business and 90 per cent of their customers were return customers. “If this happened on a daily basis we wouldn’t be open,” she said.

In their business clothes were divided into light and dark sections and provided with a wash and dry service. They were not a specialised service like a dry cleaners. They had a disclaimer notice, along with price list, displayed in their premises. “He said he wanted at least €5-600 and said he was doing us a favour. He said if we didn’t give him the money things would get worse”.

“This never happened to us before – we were totally shocked”.

The judge said she believed that Mr and Ms Mitchell had been trading for a long time and were very proud of the service they had supplied.

However, it had not been proven that the disclaimer notice had been displayed in a prominent position.

Mr Andrews had said the items were worth €1,500 new but he had no receipts to prove this. He had also said he put items into another launderette but in fact this premises was a dry cleaners.

She awarded Mr Andrews €220.