Drycleaners and industry lobbyists packed a hearing in early March to oppose this effort to change state law.
Richard Ehrenreich, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Association of Cleaners, told the meeting that the bill placed too high a burden on drycleaners. "Drycleaners are experts, but you can only be expert to a certain degree," Ehrenreich said.
According to local press reports, the proposal, introduced by Barbara A Robinson, a Democrat representing Baltimore, was inspired in part by a D.C. judge's $54 million lawsuit against his neighbourhood drycleaners over a lost pair of grey trousers. Judge Roy L. Pearson Jr.'s lawsuit against Custom Cleaners was dismissed in court. Customer Cleaners later closed because the owners spent so much fighting the suit and suffered a high degree of stress over the case.
Responding to the posting on the Washington Post's Metro Maryland website (see Archive for March 4 at http://blog.washingtonpost.com/annapolis), Bill Fisher of the Drycleaning and Laundry Institute said Robinson's bill was fatally flawed on the question of responsibility for damage.
“If a cleaner follows the care instructions - which are required by law to be a cleaning method which will clean the garment without damaging it - and a problem occurs, why should the cleaner be hit with the cost? He/she relied on the law requiring accurate care instructions, just as a consumer does at home in washing garments.”
He continued: “The two lesser responsibilities for damage lie with cleaners in some cases (they did not clean the garment properly), and in some cases with the customer (for example, there are spills which are not visible on the garment, and if not pointed out, will change colour and become set during cleaning and drying).
“If your cleaner is not giving you the customer service that you expect, you should find another cleaner. Yes, there are bad cleaners out there--and there are also many who give good service and good cleaning.
“I understand Delegate Robinson's concern about getting a damaged garment back - but there are ways of handling this other than hurting the cleaner when the majority of problems is caused by the manufacturer's incorrect care instructions.”
