Department of Weights & Measures Charges Against Vroman's Resolved

It was in July and August 2002 when plainclothes inspectors sent by the L.A. County Department of Weights and Measures (DWM) cited managers at each of the three Vroman's Bookstores in Pasadena, California, with violating the California Business and Professions Code for overcharging. Over a year later, the issue was finally resolved when a judge ruled to drop two of the three charges. Good news, right?

Not quite, explained Karen Watkins, Vroman's vice president and general manager. The single charge that was upheld proved to be extremely costly for Vroman's. Including the fine and assessment fee, attorney fees, and investigative costs, the total tally was over $5,000, she reported.

Vroman's run-in with DWM began in early 2002 when DWM began to hire inspectors to enforce the California Business and Professions Code. At that time, the business code had been in place for decades, but L.A. County lacked the manpower to enforce it. However, in February 2002, the county passed an ordinance allowing DWM to bill each retail outlet a compulsory "registration fee" for each scanner it owned. All three Vroman's stores complied with the measure, paying in excess of $500 in registration fees to DWM.

Subsequently, the registration fees collected from retail outlets went directly to the hiring of plainclothes inspectors meant to help DWM enforce the code. In other words, the same inspectors who slapped Vroman's with a citation at each of their three locations.

Vroman's first infraction occurred in its East Foothill Boulevard store on July 25, 2002. An undercover agent chose a hardcover fiction book, Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper, by Harriet Scott Chessman, from a shelf in the store and purchased it. The title had a Book Sense 76 sticker on the cover. Pointing to the sign "Book Sense 20% Off," which was located above a display of the current 76 titles, the inspector then introduced herself to the manager and said she was not given the discount on the book. The manager asked if she took the book from the Book Sense display, because the discount was only for current 76 titles. The inspector admitted that she had not. Nonetheless, because the title had the sticker, the inspector continued, it should have been discounted because of the emphasis of the display sign.

On July 31, 2002, in the main Vroman's bookstore, on East Colorado Boulevard, inspectors said that they were overcharged for a box of 4" x 6" writing journals that were priced "Journals: $4.95 each, or a Box for $49.50 plus tax." The cashier began scanning the journals -- 11 journals priced at $4.95 each -- and gave the customers the total price of $54.45. However, Watkins noted that each box was supposed to hold 10 journals, not 11.

The third infraction occurred at Vroman's South Lake Avenue store on August 14. That day, a cashier inadvertently rang up at full price a sale item that should have been discounted 50 percent. In a fax from the South Lake Avenue store manager to Watkins, the manager wrote that the confrontation with the inspectors brought the cashier to tears, and she walked off the floor.

In July 2003, a judge dropped the first two charges. The only charge upheld was the infraction at the South Lake Avenue store, which Vroman's closed in January 2003 when it opened a new location. "Our attorney talked to the judge and the Pasadena D.A. and went through [the infractions]," Watkins said. The judge subsequently ruled that the first two were not violations of the code. "The South Lake store was a cashier error … it should have been rung up as a manual discount."

And while Robert Atkins, chief deputy for L.A. County Agricultural Commissioner/DWM, told BTW in September of 2002 that fines for infractions would generally range from $25 to $100, for reasons unclear to Watkins, the now-defunct South Lake store was fined $900.

"I heard from our attorney that we got away for next to nothing," an incredulous Watkins said. "The cost of this is ridiculous." And, aside from legal fees, Vroman's had to pay the county investigative costs of $550. Legal fees amounted to $3,607.

Unfortunately, even after paying the fines, Vroman's ordeal was not quite over. In late September, Watkins was rather surprised when informed that a DWM inspector walked into the East Foothill Boulevard location and placed a "Notice of Overcharge Conviction" sign in the window by the door. The inspector informed the staff at Vroman's that the notice had to remain in the window until November 22. "So we had to get our attorney again," Watkins said. "We got permission to take [the sign] down as [the notice] can only be posted in the place where the violation occurred."

Overall, Watkins said that Vroman's battle with DWM has not changed the working environment in her bookstore. "I believe that 99.9 percent of what we have on our sales floor is accurately priced," she said. "But will cashiers make errors? I think we all will and did when we were 16 and this was our first job. I don't want them to think that this could come down on them." --David Grogan