What was inside them, according to testimony recorded by the court, was not regular.
Timothy Fullum was working through the pallets at his company’s California warehouse in early 2023 when he found the thing that started all of this.
The judge’s decision puts it in two short sentences. Fullum found an excessive number of plus size goods among the orders shipped there. And he noticed some boxes that were marked regular had plus sized goods inside.
TWO WAREHOUSES, ONE PROBLEM
Fullum called his co founder, Salomon Murciano. Murciano testified that he drove to a warehouse in Florida and saw the same thing there.
Two men. Two warehouses on opposite coasts. The same problem in both.
WHY A LABEL MATTERS THIS MUCH
Why a label matters this much comes down to how Gap has defended the case. The contract gave SVES 45 days from receipt to report any discrepancy in a single written report. Gap’s position is that SVES missed that window.
But a sealed pallet is not an inspectable pallet, and a box that is labeled wrong defeats the purpose of sampling. If you open ten cartons marked regular and they hold what the label says, you move on. If some of them do not, you have no way of knowing what the rest of the shipment holds without opening all of it.
A sealed pallet is not an inspectable pallet. A box labeled wrong defeats the purpose of sampling it.
WHAT THE PLEADING ALLEGES
SVES’s cross complaint describes the physical reality. The merchandise arrived over months, in multiple shipments, to multiple destinations around the country, wrapped and sealed on pallets, sitting in SVES warehouses at SVES’s own expense waiting to be unpacked, inventoried, labeled and sorted.
The pleading alleges Gap understood all of this, that processing millions of garments across warehouses it describes as often the size of football stadiums takes months and enormous manpower, and that inspecting everything on arrival was impossible. And it alleges Gap took advantage, hiding oversized garments among thousands of boxes.
Those are allegations in a lawsuit that has not been tried. No court has found them true.
Q: WHAT DID THE JUDGE ACTUALLY DECIDE ABOUT THE BOXES?
A: Only that Fullum and Murciano testified to finding mislabeled boxes, and that the judge recorded it as part of the factual background of the case.
The box detail is different from the broader allegations. It is testimony the judge chose to put in writing, not a ruling on who is right about the shipment as a whole.
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THE CALL
SVES notified Gap of the problem by telephone and text in February 2023. Gap sent its own representatives to a warehouse in Miami holding part of the shipment. They inspected the goods. They took photographs.
What Gap’s people concluded that day is contested. SVES alleges they confirmed the problem and acknowledged the breach. The judge’s decision does not say that. It records only that they inspected and photographed.
No document has yet been produced showing what Gap said was inside the boxes marked regular.