Opening arguments began this week in a lawsuit filed by luxury fashion brand Louis Vuitton against San Antonio’s Eisenhauer flea market. The French company says the flea market allowed vendors to sell counterfeit products and is seeking $18 million.
Louis Vuitton’s lawyer said in opening arguments that the company sent representatives to the Eisenhauer Market and found as many as 15 vendors selling fake Louis Vuitton products, the San Antonio Express-News reports.
A lawyer for the market said its on-site manager was not trained to recognized counterfeit items.
A statement issued by Louis Vuitton last year and posted on San Antonio NBC affiliate WOAI’s website says the company has been fighting counterfeiting around the world for years.
“Thanks to this fully-dedicated team of lawyers and former law enforcement professionals based in Paris with regional offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Milan, Dubai, New York and Buenos Aires, thousands of anti-counterfeiting raids are performed each year,” the company says in the statement.
The lawsuit was originally filed in February 2011. A commenter on the blog Strange in San Antonio said he had purchased a fake bag from the market, and the quality was questionable.
“The stitching started to let go after a few months and it ended up looking pretty ratty after a year,” Keith Allen K posted.
Louis Vuitton is also embroiled in a legal dispute with Warner Brothers over the appearance of fake handbags in the movie Hangover Part II, according to PaidContent.org.
And just last week in Orlando, police arrested a couple and accused them of selling counterfeit Louis Vuitton bags at a flea market, along with other fake designer brands, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
