Customers are now suing after they say expensive and new LG refrigerators they've purchased are failing much sooner than they're supposed to, as early as one year from their purchase date. Once their units fail, customers say LG and the retailers that sold the products to them have offered little help to get their refrigerators back up and running. These families are now suing LG and other national retailers over what they call fraudulent actions.

Popular electronics and home appliance company LG is at the center of this new class action lawsuit representing over 100 plaintiffs in Illinois, Philadelphia, California, and other states. The lawsuit was filed by Los Angeles attorney Azar Mouzari and names LG, Kenmore, and other retailers as defendants.

The lawsuit is focused on a critical component known as a linear compressor. This compressor is designed to use less energy and make less noise and is “the heart of the refrigerator,” according to Mouzari. The lawsuit describes this critical part as being defective, alleging that when it fails, it impacts the entire operation of the refrigerator, including its ability to make ice or stay cool.

According to Mouzari, LG’s literature advertises that products are offered with a 10-year warranty and provide an impressive “20-year durability.” However, owners are saying this is far from reality.

One owner, Sarah Lloyd of St. Charles, Illinois, says that over the past six years, she has had to deal with repeated failures with her refrigerator. In 2018 she purchased a new $2,500 LG refrigerator from Sears which suddenly stopped working soon after she purchased it. Sears was unable to fix it after technicians were sent to her home 11 times. Ultimately Sears allowed her to pick out a replacement unit.

The second time around Lloyd opted for a Kenmore refrigerator, not knowing the critical component that failed the first time was being used in her new refrigerator. A year after getting the replacement unit, it failed on her.

Lloyd shared with local outlet 5 Chicago that the new refrigerator “was an LG-manufactured fridge with a Kenmore façade. Extremely misleading.”

After bringing up the issue with her new refrigerator to Sears, the retailer said that only parts were under warranty, not labor, and that it was “$800 for an hour of labor.” Lloyd reached out to repair shops for help but said that no one would fix it because of the brand’s defective history.

Lloyd’s experience is not isolated, as other LG refrigerator owners say they’ve had similar frustrating experiences.

Mouzari shares that “Thousands, if not tens of thousands” of families have been impacted by LG’s fraudulent practices, adding, “We have been inundated with calls.”

Despite LG knowing that its compressors were defective, the company continued replacing refrigerators that failed with refrigerators that had the same defective part, a practice Mouzari says was deceptive and fraudulent.

The claims against LG are not new. In 2020, LG was embroiled in similar litigation over its failing refrigerators. Those lawsuits also focused on the quick-to-fail linear compressors. That lawsuit, which covered individuals who purchased select models between Jan. 1, 2014, and Dec. 31, 2017, was settled for $1.5 million.

Despite that lawsuit, Mouzari says LG continued engaging in the same actions, and this time, it was knowingly defrauding its customers by continuing to sell the faulty refrigerators.

“We know that they’ve known about this issue. And they know the rate of failure is just unreasonably high,” Mouzari explains. She goes on to say that national chain stores “were aware of the issue” about the faulty compressor but continued to sell the refrigerators regardless.

LG has responded to the claims made in the lawsuit and shared in part, "Our focus on customer satisfaction is paramount,” adding, “Refrigerator service issues are generally related to cooling performance, which can be caused by various factors. For LG-brand refrigerators, when, on occasion, cooling issues arise, our refrigerators are backed by our five-year limited warranty on the cooling system, which fully covers parts and labor related to servicing the sealed system or compressor within five years from the original retail purchase date.”