Published
September 17, 2026
Washington residents who received H&M marketing emails may be covered by a proposed class action alleging the retailer announced deadlines for sitewide discounts it then extended, or beat with a bigger discount days later. No class has been certified and there is nothing to file yet.
Allegations Only · No Settlement Yet
This article describes a class action complaint. The statements below are unproven allegations. H&M has not been found liable, there is no certified class, and nothing to claim at this time. This page is informational and is not legal advice.
What Is This About?
A proposed class action accuses H&M of sending Washington shoppers marketing emails whose subject lines announced a deadline that, according to the complaint, was not real. The case is Iniguez v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB, filed April 30, 2026 in the Superior Court of Washington for Spokane County as No. 26-2-02205-32 and removed by the defense to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington on June 3, 2026, where it is docketed as No. 2:26-cv-00244. The named defendants are H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB, the Stockholm parent, and its U.S. subsidiary H&M Fashion USA, Inc.The legal hook is a Washington statute, not a federal one. The Commercial Electronic Mail Act, RCW 19.190.020(1)(b), makes it unlawful to send a commercial email to an address the sender knows or has reason to know belongs to a Washington resident when the message "contains false or misleading information in the subject line." The complaint alleges H&M did exactly that, and because a CEMA violation is a per se violation of Washington's Consumer Protection Act, it seeks liquidated damages of $500 per email, trebled, plus an injunction and fees. H&M has not been found liable, and the allegations remain unproven.
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Status
Complaint filed · removed to federal court
No certified class, no settlement, no claim form
Damages Sought
$500 per email, trebled
Filed April 30, 2026 — ahead of the June 11, 2026 amendment that cut the figure to $100
Who It Covers
Washington residents who got H&M marketing email
No purchase required under the proposed class definition
Can I Claim?
No — nothing to claim yet
The Two Patterns the Complaint Describes
The allegations sort into two shapes, and the distinction matters because they fail the same statutory test for different reasons.The first is the extension. A subject line sets a hard stop — a day, an evening, a count of hours — and the sale is then extended past it in a follow-up email sent the next morning. The complaint alleges H&M has run this sequence since at least 2022 and treats the extension not as a favor to shoppers but as a second sales window the retailer planned for while the first deadline was still being advertised as final.
The second is what the complaint calls a twist on the theme: a deadline announced for one discount, followed within days by a promotion that matches or exceeds it. On that theory the stated deadline is accurate in the narrowest sense — that particular promotion did end — while the urgency it creates is alleged to be false, because a shopper who ignored the email entirely would have done better by waiting. The complaint alleges H&M knew the larger discount was coming when it sent the earlier deadline.
The subject lines the complaint reproduces, all of them alleged rather than established:
| The deadline email | What the complaint says came next |
|---|---|
| "15% off sitewide — for 24 hours only!" (Sept. 18, 2022) | "EXTENDED ONE MORE DAY: 15% off sitewide!" the following day |
| "Just HOURS left: 30% off" (Nov. 25, 2022) | A Cyber Monday email on Nov. 27 offering the same 30% off sitewide |
| "Just HOURS left: 30% off" (Nov. 24, 2023) | "30% off for Black Friday extended!" the next day |
| "20% off ends tonight!" and "20% off is almost gone!" (Jan. 15, 2024) | "Extended! 20% off sitewide for 1 more day" on Jan. 16 |
| "Memorial Day: 20% off ends tonight!" (May 27, 2024) | A 25% off flash sale announced May 31 |
| "15% or 20% off ends tonight." (Aug. 25, 2024) | "Surprise! Up to 20% off for 1 more day." on Aug. 26 |
| "Last day: 20% off + free shipping" (Oct. 8, 2025) | The identical subject line again on Oct. 12 |
| "Final hours: Up to 50% off sitewide" (Nov. 23, 2025) | "Up to 60% off is early for Cyber Monday" on Nov. 29 |
| "Last day: 15% off your order" (Dec. 28, 2025) | "25% off flash sale = happier new year" on Jan. 1, 2026 |
| "20% off or 25% off ends today" (March 8, 2026) | "25% off flash sale starts now" on March 11 |
The complaint frames all of this with the Federal Trade Commission's dark-patterns report, which names the "False Limited Time Message" — a deadline that is meaningless or simply resets when it arrives — as a recognized manipulation technique. That report is context for the argument, not a finding about H&M, and the FTC has not taken any action against the company over these emails.
Why $500 an Email Turns Into $1,500
CEMA on its own is a prohibition with no private damages figure attached. The money comes from RCW 19.190.030, which makes a CEMA violation a per se violation of Washington's Consumer Protection Act, and from the CPA's own remedy: the greater of actual damages or liquidated damages of $500 per violation, trebled, plus costs and a reasonable attorney's fee. That is the $1,500-per-email arithmetic driving the whole wave of Washington email cases, and it is why these complaints plead volume instead of individual harm — a recipient does not have to show they were deceived, lost money, or even opened the message.Volume is pleaded here too. The complaint alleges that across 2022 through 2025, H&M sent marketing emails at a rate averaging roughly 557 per year, about 46 a month, and more than one a day. It also alleges H&M appears to use Adobe Campaign to run those sends, which the complaint says should let the company produce a list of every address that received each email and every link each recipient clicked. Those are the plaintiffs' allegations about what discovery should show, not findings.
The other half of the statute is the part defendants most often contest: the sender must know, or have reason to know, that the address belongs to a Washington resident. The complaint devotes a section to that element and lists six routes it says a retailer of H&M's size has — the sheer volume of its sends, purchase and account data shoppers supply directly, IP-based location from email opens, consumer data purchased from brokers, identity-resolution services, and the statutory mechanism in RCW 19.190.020(2) that lets a sender ask a domain registrant whether a recipient is a Washington resident. Whether any of that satisfies the knowledge element is a question for the court.
The Filing Date Is Doing Real Work Here
Washington narrowed CEMA this year. House Bill 2274, signed March 23, 2026 and effective June 11, 2026, cut per-violation statutory damages from $500 to $100 and added a requirement that the sender knew, or that knowledge was fairly implied from objective circumstances, that the subject line was false or misleading. The amendment is not retroactive — it governs actions brought on or after the effective date.This complaint was filed April 30, 2026, six weeks before that line. It is therefore pleaded under the $500 figure and the pre-amendment standard, and it sits inside the rush of filings that landed in the weeks before the change took effect. A materially identical complaint filed in July 2026 would be worth a fifth as much per email and would carry a knowledge element the plaintiff would have to plead and prove. The dynamic is covered in more depth in our roundup of the Washington CEMA email lawsuits and the companies sued so far.
The wave itself traces to Brown v. Old Navy, LLC, 567 P.3d 38 (Wash. 2025), in which the Washington Supreme Court answered a certified question from a federal court and read CEMA's subject-line prohibition broadly. This complaint leans on it directly, citing the opinion for the proposition that a subject line can contain a false statement of fact about the "duration or availability of a promotion." Before Brown, CEMA had produced roughly eight cases in its entire history.
Who the Proposed Class Would Cover
As written, the class is all Washington residents who during the class period received a commercial email sent by H&M, on its behalf, or with its assistance, containing subject-line messaging that misrepresented the facts of a sale, deal or promotion. The class period runs from four years before the complaint was filed to the date of any class certification order, which tracks the four-year limitations period for these claims. H&M's own officers, directors and employees, its affiliates, plaintiffs' counsel, and court personnel are excluded.Two features are worth noting. Nothing in the definition requires a purchase, an account, or even that the recipient opened the message — receiving it at a Washington address is what it turns on. And the definition is explicitly provisional: the complaint reserves the right to amend it as discovery identifies additional emails. Class definitions routinely change between a complaint and a certification ruling, and a great many cases never reach one. The complaint estimates the class at thousands of members, which is the plaintiffs' figure offered to show joinder would be impracticable, not a court's finding.
Read the H&M Class Action Complaint
The class action complaint, filed as Exhibit A to the notice of removal in Case No. 2:26-cv-00244, is embedded below.Where the Case Stands
After removal on June 3, 2026, the case was transferred between divisions of the Eastern District of Washington and randomly reassigned, landing on the Spokane docket as No. 2:26-cv-00244. Pretrial motion practice began in July 2026 and included a venue motion, a motion to strike that the court resolved on July 22, and briefing that closed with reply memoranda at the end of July. The court noticed a hearing on a pending motion on September 16, 2026. No court has ruled on the merits of the CEMA or CPA claims, and no class has been certified.The defenses these cases usually draw are already visible elsewhere in the wave. The most significant is federal preemption: the CAN-SPAM Act supersedes state commercial-email laws except to the extent they prohibit falsity or deception, and defendants argue that carve-out reaches only traditional fraud theories rather than CEMA's strict-liability structure. A federal court rejected that argument in January 2026, and in a parallel Washington case a judge refused to dismiss a suit over a "LAST DAY!" Hanes subject line. Neither ruling binds this court.
There is nothing for a Washington shopper to file in the meantime, and there may never be. If the case does produce a settlement, it would follow the shape of the $14 million Costco Washington email settlement, which resolved a materially similar extended-promotion theory under the same statute. This page will be updated if the posture changes.
Questions
Is there an H&M settlement or claim form?
No. The case is at the pleading stage in federal court, with no certified class, no settlement fund and no claim form. Nothing can be filed or claimed at this time, and many cases like this one end without a class ever being certified.
Who would the proposed H&M class cover?
As written in the complaint, Washington residents who received a commercial email sent by or on behalf of H&M during the class period whose subject line misrepresented the facts of a sale, deal or promotion. The class period runs from four years before the complaint was filed to the date of any class certification order. The definition is provisional — the complaint reserves the right to amend it, and courts frequently narrow class definitions or decline to certify a class at all.
Why does the April 2026 filing date matter so much in this case?
Washington amended CEMA through House Bill 2274, signed March 23, 2026 and effective June 11, 2026. The amendment cut per-violation statutory damages from $500 to $100 and added a requirement that the sender knew the subject line was false or misleading. It applies only to actions brought on or after June 11, 2026. This complaint was filed April 30, 2026, so it is pleaded under the older $500 figure and the prior standard.
Does a shopper have to have bought something from H&M to be in the proposed class?
No. The class definition in the complaint turns on receiving a commercial email as a Washington resident, not on making a purchase, holding an account, or even opening the message. CEMA claims are built on the content of the subject line rather than on proof that a recipient relied on it or lost money.
What should Washington shoppers who get H&M emails do now?
There is nothing to file. Keeping the original messages rather than screenshots or forwards is the only practical step, because these cases turn on the exact subject line and the delivery date. Anyone who wants advice about their own situation should speak with a consumer-protection attorney licensed in their state. OpenClassActions.com is a news site, not a law firm, and does not process claims.
Sources
• Class Action Complaint, Iniguez v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB, No. 26-2-02205-32 (Spokane County Super. Ct., filed April 30, 2026), filed as Exhibit A to the notice of removal in No. 2:26-cv-00244 (E.D. Wash.) — Complaint PDF• Federal docket, Iniguez v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB, No. 2:26-cv-00244 (E.D. Wash.) — CourtListener RECAP
• Commercial Electronic Mail Act, RCW 19.190.020 — Washington State Legislature
• Consumer Protection Act, RCW 19.86.020 — Washington State Legislature
• Brown v. Old Navy, LLC, 4 Wash. 3d 580, 567 P.3d 38 (2025)
• House Bill 2274 (2026) — Washington State Legislature bill tracking
• Federal Trade Commission, Bringing Dark Patterns to Light (2022) — FTC staff report
For more class actions keep scrolling below.
Status
Complaint filed — removed to federal court; no certified class, no settlement
Case Title
Iniguez v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB
Case Number
2:26-cv-00244
Court
U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Washington
Originally Filed
Spokane County Superior Court — No. 26-2-02205-32, April 30, 2026
Date Removed
June 3, 2026
Claims
Washington Commercial Electronic Mail Act — RCW 19.190.020(1)(b) · Consumer Protection Act — RCW 19.86.020
Damages Sought
$500 per email liquidated, trebled · injunction · attorney's fees
Complaint
Read the Complaint (PDF)
