Federal Court OK’s Suit Against TheLadders: Breach of contract & deceptive practices

ladders3During the many years this blog has reported the questionable practices of TheLadders, angry Ladders customers who felt scammed often commented that someone should file a class action against the company. Their wishes have come true.

The United States District Court, Southern District of New York, has ruled that a consumer action lawsuit may proceed against TheLadders, a job board that long claimed to be “exclusive” for “only $100k+” job seekers and “only $100k+ jobs.”

The case was filed March 2013 by Bursor & Fisher, New York City consumer class action attorneys. A month after the filing, TheLadders CEO Alex Douzet appeared on WNYC radio and said, “This case has no merit, and we hope that it will be thrown out of the court quickly.”

In an order issued March 12, 2014, the federal Court denied TheLadders’ motion to dismiss the suit brought by its customers for “breach of contract” and “deceptive acts or practices.”

Plaintiffs in the case allege they paid for job postings and resume services that TheLadders failed to deliver, and that TheLadders used deceptive advertising that often appeared on the company’s website:

“TheLadders reviews each job listing found online or submitted by recruiters and employers before it’s posted to ensure it meets the criteria of a $100K+ position.”

The Court noted that TheLadders advertised itself as:

“a premium job site for only $100K+ jobs” where “[e]xperts pre-screen all jobs so they’re always 100K+” and members would “find hand-selected and pre-screened jobs that are $100K+.”

50000jobsPlaintiffs say that job positions either did not exist or had salaries less than TheLadders promised. But in its motion to dismiss the case, TheLadders asserts that its customers should know better than to confuse ads on the company’s website with promises the company makes in its contract. The Court noted in its order that:

“The defendant [TheLadders] argues that these representations were mere advertisements and were not terms of any contract.”

Some of the plaintiffs also allege that TheLadders “scammed” them and was “knowingly deceptive” when it offered an “expert resume critique” that was actually just a sales pitch copied from a “crib sheet.” One of the plaintiffs says a resume “expert” at TheLadders produced a scathing critique of his resume — which he had previously paid TheLadders to write for him.

TheLadders told the Court that its Terms of Use “disclosed that the website would not guarantee the quality of the job listings or the services.”

ladders5The Court wrote:

“…the resume plaintiffs’ allegation that misrepresenting a sales pitch as ‘expert resume critique’ is also sufficient to support an inference that the defendant’s behavior was ‘knowingly deceptive,’ especially in light of the alleged instructions to the sales personnel on how to represent themselves as ‘writer[s] and analyst[s]’ in order to convince the client about their qualifications.”

The Court granted TheLadders’ motion to dismiss claims of plaintiffs who were outside the statute of limitations, but the Court denied TheLadders motion to dismiss all the plaintiffs.

According to the complaint,

ladders4“From its inception until September, 2011, TheLadders scammed its customers into paying for its job board service by misrepresenting itself to be ‘a premium job site for only $100k+ jobs, and only $100k+ talent.’ In fact, TheLadders sold access to purported ‘$100k+’ job listings that (1) did not exist, (2) did not pay $100k+, and/or (3) were not authorized to be posted on TheLadders by the employers.”

In 2011, TheLadders stopped its “Only $100K+ jobs” advertisements (see Running On Empty: TheLadders folds up its shell game).

The Court ruled that the plaintiff “has sufficiently pleaded a claim that the defendant breached the June 2010 Terms of Use.” The Court also ruled that facts pleaded by the plaintiffs “give rise to a plausible inference that the allegedly deceptive transaction occurred in New York,” and that the plaintiffs have standing to assert claims under the law.

The long-awaited class action lawsuit against TheLadders for breach of contract and deceptive acts or practices may now move forward in federal court.


Unrelated to the case, employers have also alleged that TheLadders misrepresents salaries. In a 2011 Ask The Headhunter column (also reported on ERE.net) a recruiter at Royal Dutch Shell said that TheLadders scraped low-paying jobs from Shell’s website without Shell’s knowledge and pawned them off on TheLadders customers as higher-paying jobs. The recruiter said that the job applicants blamed Shell when they appeared for interviews only to learn the jobs paid salaries nowhere near what TheLadders represented. Referring to the overhead cost of interviewing inappropriate applicants channeled through TheLadders, the Shell recruiter said, “I’d love to charge them [TheLadders] for the amount of my time they wasted.”

The excerpt below is from a newsletter written by then-CEO of TheLadders Marc Cenedella — who pitched a feature of his service that the Shell recruiter gave the lie to just a few months later:

cenedella3

In June, 2011 Cenedella announced a new service — “A job offer. Guaranteed. Or your money back” for $2,495 — which included a new resume and an “advisor.” One month later, TheLadders announced cut-rate prices for all job seekers.

In a few short years, TheLadders went from “exclusive” and “Only $100K+”, and from offering resume services priced at $2,495, to “hardly exclusive” — and today there is no indication on TheLadders website that it offers resume services or guarantees of any kind. Today it’s just another job board, mired in costly litigation with angry customers who have been complaining about TheLadders questionable practices for years — customers who are finally getting their day in court.

Today, Marc Cenedella is Executive Chairman of TheLadders and CEO of Knozen.com, an under-construction website that’s taking names of people who want to be notified when the site is working.


Related articles

TheLadders sued for multiple scams in U.S. District Court class action | TheLadders: How the scam worksTheLadders: A lipstick pig’s death rattle? | TheLadders: Going Down? | Rickety, Leads Nowhere | The Dope on TheLadders | Marc Cenedella Sells E-mails: $30/month | TheLadders: Job-board salary fraud? | TheLadders: A Long-Shot PowerBall Lottery Tucked Inside a Well-Oiled PR Machine | TheLadders’ Mercenaries to Critics: They’re good eggs!

: :

TheLadders sued for multiple scams in U.S. District Court class action

ladderscomplaintAsk The Headhunter readers have been asking for it for years, and it’s finally happened. A consumer protection class action was filed against TheLadders on March 11, 2013 in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, for:

    • breach of contract,
    • money had and received,
    • breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing,
    • violation of the Arkansas Deceptive and Unconscionable Trade Practices Act, and
    • unjust enrichment

The suit alleges that:

“From its inception until September, 2011, TheLadders scammed its customers into paying for its job board service by misrepresenting itself to be ‘a premium job site for only $100k+ jobs, and only $100k+ talent.’ In fact, TheLadders sold access to purported ‘$100k+’ job listings that (1) did not exist, (2) did not pay $100k+, and/or (3) were not authorized to be posted on TheLadders by the employers.”

Click here for a complete court-stamped copy of the class action complaint.


UPDATE March 19, 2014
Angry, frustrated customers of TheLadders who say they were scammed finally get their day in court. Federal Court OK’s Suit Against TheLadders: Breach of contract & deceptive practices


More:

“Unlike other online job boards which are free to join, TheLadders charged a premium subscription fee to members for ‘hand-screen[ing] every job post and recruiter so you only see real, open $100k+ jobs in your area.’ In reality, however, its job postings were not hand-screened. They were ‘scraped’ from the Internet without authorization from employers or recruiters, and the employment opportunities were not for ‘real, open $100k+ jobs.’ Moreover, TheLadders had no process in place to ensure that these posted positions ever truly existed, remained open, or that they met its minimum advertised salary criteria of $100k+.”

If you believe you were scammed by TheLadders, you can obtain more information from Bursor & Fisher, the law firm that filed the complaint.

I’m laffing my ass off.

Not just because I’m happy TheLadders is finally getting exposed for its stupidly arrogant empty promises. But because it took so long for an attorney to read TheLadders advertising:

“Only $100k+ Jobs. Only $100k+ Candidates.”

In 2010, a very unhappy CFO who had spent loads of money on TheLadders — and even more of his valuable time — ran the numbers and reported that the numbers just didn’t add up. There was no way that TheLadders could deliver the number of “$100K+ jobs” that it promised: TheLadders: A long-shot Powerball lottery tucked inside a well-oiled PR machine.

TheLadders has been lying for years. Evidence from TheLadders’ own customers — reported here and elsewhere — has revealed again and again that TheLadders’ database never had “only” $100K anything in it. TheLadders own representatives were admitting it to angry customers in customer service chats — that at least one customer had the good sense to save.

ladders3When it seemed job hunters doubted the database, TheLadders’ chieftain, Marc Cenedella, came up with a claim even stupider than that: TheLadders had experts checking over very single job to make sure they’re always $100K+.

Yah, right. Not long afterwards, after repeated reports that TheLadders was still lying, Cenedella dumped the $100K lie altogether. The salary checkers are gone (Oh, I’m laffing my noogies off, Marc!) and any salary goes!

But the lawyers at Bursor & Fisher saved all the advertising graphics and the lies and stuck them into a class action complaint. Funny how stuff like that follows a company around — and drags it into court.

I expect Marc Cenedella is gagging on that jpg right about now. There’s more where that came from, Marc. Read the complaint — and don’t miss all the nice graphics you paid for over the years. The filing is loaded with them.

A little history

TheLadders is not a new subject on this blog. We’ve covered the company’s questionable behaviors many times. No one should be surprised that Marc Cenedella’s company is being sued. Here’s a selection of posts:

TheLadders: How the scam works

The dope on TheLadders

TheLadders: A long-shot Powerball lottery tucked inside a well-oiled PR machine

TheLadders: Job-board salary fraud?

TheLadders’ rigid set of criteria

One tiny $100K+ mistake

Got a Ladders story of your own? Tell it, tell it — now maybe something will come of it! Did you save some documentation that no one would pay attention to before? Share it, share it! Now somebody’s listening.

: :