Certain Target Bedding Labeled with Inflated Thread Counts, Class Action Lawsuit Says

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A proposed class action lawsuit claims Target has misled consumers by advertising some of its sheet sets and bedding products with inflated thread counts.

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The 19-page Target lawsuit was filed by a San Diego resident who purchased a set of “100% cotton” Threshold Signature sheets advertised as having a thread count of 800. The suit alleges that, contrary to the labeling, independent testing revealed that the bedding product, in fact, had a total thread count of 288—more than 60 percent lower than advertised.

The case contends that the retailer advertises many other sheet sets, bedsheets or pillowcases with “misleading” thread counts—that is, the number of vertical and horizontal threads per square inch of fabric. Specifically, the complaint challenges the label claims of bedding products that Target markets as having thread counts of 600 or more, including California Design Den’s “5-Star Luxury” 600-count sateen sheet set made with 100 percent cotton and certain Blue Nile Mills-brand “100% cotton” sheet sets labeled with thread counts of 1,000 and 1,200.

The filing charges that any label claim advertising 100-percent cotton bedding as having a thread count of 600 or higher is deceptive because, according to the lawsuit, “it is physically impossible for cotton threads to be fine enough to allow for 600 or more threads in a single square inch of 100% cotton fabric.”

The suit argues that the alleged misrepresentations have misled consumers into believing the products are more durable, softer and of a higher quality than they actually are.

As the case tells it, Target relies on a newer method of measuring thread count that “dramatically increase[s] the thread count of a given textile” compared with the results that an industry-standard measurement test would produce. Per the complaint, the Federal Trade Commission in a 2005 letter “rejected the newer method of thread counting” and determined that it could, indeed, mislead consumers by falsely inflating products’ thread counts.

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone in California who, in the past four years, purchased bedsheet sets or individual sheets or pillowcases advertised as 100-percent cotton with a thread count of 600 or higher.

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