Bar Exams, Continuing Legal Education / CLE, Lawsuit of the Day, Weddings

An Update on Hydrangea-gate and Little Miss Party Pants

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Lots of good stuff in the comments to our Lawsuit of the Day. It’s well on its way to becoming an official Comments Clusterf**k. This comment might be our favorite:

Wedding flowers: $27,000.

Damages sought for wrong color wedding flowers: $400,000.

Being delinquent in your attorney registration, while filing a public lawsuit on your own behalf: Priceless

It appears to be true. From the New York State Attorney Registration site:

Maybe Elana Glatt should spend more time attending CLE courses and less time suing florists. We recommend the City Bar class on Service, Therapy, & Emotional Support Animals (which we once sat through, even though it had nothing to do with our practice, ’cause we were desperate for CLE credits).
But Elana “Party Pants” Glatt, predictably dubbed “Bridezilla” by many of you, has her defenders. Read on, after the jump.


A good defense of Elana Elbogen appears in this comment.

If anyone bothered to read the actual complaint, you would see that the florist not only breached its contract but also committed fraud and fraudulent inducement. It used a classic bait and switch tactic – showing the bride one centerpiece to convince her to use their services and then providing a different (much less expensive) one at the actual wedding when it was too late to do anything about it.

And, according to the complaint, it was not just the colors that were wrong – the species of the flowers were totally different and much less expensive. And that is just the centerpieces – the complaint goes on about items that were simply missing or displayed incorrectly. And, according to the complaint, due to the florist’s horrible service, the bride herself was arranging flowers moments before her weeding!

Had the florist simply breached its contract, then the $27,000 contract price would be appropriate damages. But here, the florist lied to the bride to get her to use them and then screwed her over – and for that, the bride can get tort damages including punative [sic] damages. I don’t see why the damages are extreme here. And as someone else noted – any florist that can charge $27,000 for flowers is not some poor little mom-and-pop shop – they can fend for themselves. Sorry, but I have I have no pity for Posy…

Or check out this one:

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I’m alot more sympathetic after reading the NY Post article on this. The text below is from that article:

“Elana e-mailed Arakas attaching a picture of a particular hydrangea – a green hydrangea with red tips, sometimes called antique hydrangea, or rust hydrangea – and asked Arakas if that particular flower would be available in that particular color in August for her wedding. Arakas responded in an e-mail that she could provide the ‘exact’ same color,” the suit says.

A month later, Posy – in return for $1,000 – showed the couple a sample centerpiece with the hydrangeas, and told them “the centerpieces at the wedding would be ‘exactly’ the same as the sample,” the suit says. They picked Posy as their florist, and meticulously planned the arrangements.”

Apparently the flowers they provided are a lot cheaper.

The New York Post article is available here.
By the way, we’ve left email and telephone messages for Elana Elbogen (whose assistant answers her phone now as “Ms. Glatt’s office”). We haven’t heard back from her, but we’ll let you know if and when we do.
ELANA BETH ELBOGEN [New York State Attorney Registration]
BRIDAL BLOOM & DOOM [New York Post]
Earlier: Lawsuit of the Day: More Floral Litigation

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