Safeway to Pay $30 Million for Online Grocery Markup

A California federal court has determined that Safeway is liable for
$30 million in damages for claims alleging that the company charged
different prices for products sold online despite a contractual agreement
that in-store and online prices would be the same. Rodman v. Safeway
Inc., No. 11-3003 (N.D. Cal., order entered August 31, 2015). The court
granted partial summary judgment to the plaintiffs in December 2014,
finding that Safeway breached the contract. Details about the decision
appear in Issue 549 of this Update.

The court arrived at the damages amount by calculating the sum that
Safeway earned from the concealed markup between April 2010 and
December 2012. The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ attempt to expand
the class to include purchases before 2006, when Safeway switched
from paying a third party to manage online sales to running the website
in-house.

Issue 578