Laws

Couple Awarded $75K After Chicago Walgreens ‘Destroyed 30 Years of Memories' on VHS Tapes, Lawyer Says

Walgreens did not immediately respond to request for comment Friday evening.

A married couple was awarded $75,000 Friday after a Chicago Walgreens “negligently destroyed” 28 of their family VHS tapes years earlier, their lawyers say.

Jamie and David Schwartz brought their family’s VHS tapes for conversion to DVD to the Walgreens at 2317 N. Clark Street in September of 2014. The store was supposed to “preserve irreplaceable memories forever,” attorneys from the Corboy and Demeterio law firm said. The store was moving up the street at the time and admitted all of the tapes were destroyed during the process, the law firm says.

“Evidence showed that proper identification and tracking procedures for packaging were no followed by the store’s employee when Jamie brought in the tapes,” the firm said in a statement. “Walgreens searched for the tapes for weeks. They were never found.”

A spokesman for Walgreens declined to comment.

Lawyers for the Schwartz family say the drugstore offered to pay the replacement value for each blank tape at a total of $252.

“Walgreens also contended that Jamie Schwartz knew of the limiting terms by clicking the computer kiosk screen, which limited the value for these irreplaceable memories to the cost of a blank tape,” the law firm said. “However, evidence at the arbitration showed that the Walgreens employee who processed the order clicked the computer kiosk screen and not Mrs. Schwartz.”

A Cook County appointed commercial arbitrator found in favor of the Schwartz family nearly three years after the tapes were lost.

“Walgreens advertised that its VHS to DVD conversion program would preserve irreplaceable memories forever yet after it negligently destroyed 30 years of memories, it wanted to reimburse the Schwartz family a couple of hundred bucks,” said Francis Patrick Murphy, a partner at Corboy and Demetrio.

The size of the award was the highest amount the arbitrator could award, the firm said.

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