A pair of cultured black pearls at the heart of a lawsuit could be called Tahitian, South Sea, peacock green or black with gold tones, but a B.C. jeweller has found out the hard way that pearls are not interchangeable.
Lucy Dan Li brought two pearls from a pearl necklace into Y+ED Jewellry Design to be refashioned into earrings. Li said the jeweller agreed to complete the job free because she had also brought in some diamond jewelry to be modified.
She picked up the earrings months later, but Li returned the next day, saying the pearls in the earrings were not the ones she brought in, according to a written decision by the civil resolution tribunal.
The two sides wrote up an agreement, stipulating the jeweller would provide Li with a pair of black pearls as “collateral” until the disagreement could be settled. Li also kept the earrings.
Li returned later with a third pearl from the necklace to show it was different from the earrings, but Y+ED wasn’t convinced and maintained the earrings were made with the original pearls.
That day, Li posted on social media that the jeweller had swapped the pearls during the custom job. That prompted the jeweller to ask Li to pay $1,500 in labour and materials for the earrings and, when she didn’t pay, filed this lawsuit.
Y+ED told the tribunal it agreed to waive its usual fee because Li had “bargained.” But because she tried to ruin its reputation with the social media post, “it is only fair that she now pays,” the jeweller also said.
But the tribunal vice-chair, Shelley Lopez, dismissed the jeweller’s claim because Y+ED had agreed to waive labour charges and the online post “does not alter that agreement.”
Li countersued for return of her original pearls, submitting an appraisal for $5,000 apiece. She agreed to cap her claim for $5,000, the maximum allowable amount in the tribunal.
Lopez accepted Li’s evidence that showed the earring pearls were scratched and bumpy, not smooth like the originals, and slightly larger than the originals, which were 11 mm each.
And the receipt listed the two pearls as 11 mm, not 11.26 and 11.28 mm, the size of the pearls in the earrings.
“On balance, I find the receipt’s description favours Ms. Li’s version of events,” Lopez wrote.
The jeweller also said it went over its inventory “to check if there is a mistake,” and couldn’t find the originals, which suggests “it was possible they had not used the original pearls as agreed,” the ruling said.
“I find the earring pearls were not the original pearls,” she wrote, in granting damages of $5,000 to Li.
The court also ordered Li to return the collateral pearls to Y+ED, but allowed Li to keep the pearl earrings because she could claim only the maximum $5,000 for the two pearls and therefore would not “be unjustly enriched by keeping them.”
Neither Li nor the jeweller could be reached for comment.
