# Friend claimed I ruined his late grandma's reupholstered chair. Wants me to pay for damages. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 30, 2017, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602 "2017-12-30T23:57:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2017, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/41 "2017-12-31T22:05:17Z")
I would never wear new clothing without washing it first, and for this exact reason. I recall Jordache jeans being notorious for this back in the '80s. The stainer owes reparations to the chair owner. Both time and money are required. Time to research a truly worthy cleaning service, and to carry/transport the chair there and back again. Money to effect the cleaning or repair. If the cleaning doesn’t work, then the stainer needs to find the same fabric the owner used, and have it replaced. If the same fabric can’t be found, then I’m afraid making both chairs match again is required. Whether or not the fabric was a good choice is completely outside the matter. The stainer was plainly wrong to sit in what he knew to be a precious vintage piece of furniture. Who does that? Who even sits without waiting to be invited? A project like that should be admired and respected, not “flopped” upon. All that being said, $650 seems rather a high price to name off the bat, without first having looked into cleaning services. In the end, your reasons for wanting to keep this friend do not in any way describe a friendly relationship. It’s clearly a transactional relationship in your mind, which makes it even more important to correctly repair the damage. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2017, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/42 "2017-12-31T22:27:56Z")
> [@DkTrdGuy](#): > > I barely said “hi” to my friend and then I immediately flopped down on one of his chairs. That sentence is definitely pinging oddly with me. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2017, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/43 "2017-12-31T23:41:04Z")
Possibility one: the op had no idea that normal use of a chair would harm it any way and neither did the owner of the chair. Lesson learned by both. More responsibility to the owner of the chair, who chose such a delicate fabric and then just put it where it would be used in typical chair fashion, than to the guest who just sat as guests normally do if not in a museum. But offering to pay for cleaning would be gracious. Asking for the guest to pay for re-reupholstery is absurd. Did he not even Scotchgard it? Possibility two: the owner knew the chair’s fabric was that fragile and the guest had no idea that it was. Bad and risky choice and a guest using the chair as a chair when it is placed in a way for it to be used as such is what should be expected. Harm to the chair is completely on his head. His immediately getting “all bug-eyed” as soon as the chair was sat on suggests such is the case. The fact that the guest had been wearing the jeans elsewhere without causing harm suggest that he both had no idea that such could occur and that there was something particularly fragile about this chair fabric. Yes a light colored suede is a risky fabric to use. The reupholsterer should have warned him and at least tried to convince him of a different choice. Clearly the guest did not behave negligently. The chair became damaged during usual and customary chair use and if it was not to be used in that manner then the owner had the onus to protect it from such. The value of the relationship (as odd as the value may be judged by the op) may make offering to pay worth it but ethically … no. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/44 "2018-01-01T00:07:32Z")
Regarding jeans staining: Most of the nice jeans I’ve bought in the last few years (from Nordstrom’s) have done this (color rubs off on skin etc.), even after multiple washings. I never had it happen back when I used to buy Levi’s so not sure what’s up. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/45 "2018-01-01T00:07:42Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > The fact that the guest had been wearing the jeans elsewhere without causing harm suggest that he both had no idea that such could occur and that there was something particularly fragile about this chair fabric. I don’t see that the OP claims he had worn the jeans elsewhere without the dye bleeding. He says he “didn’t think about that before I sat down”, which doesn’t sound like he was surprised the jeans might bleed, just that he wasn’t thinking about it in the moment. AFAIK there’s no way for the fabric of the _chair_ to cause the _jeans_ to bleed, although the dye could be more obvious/harder to clean depending on the fabric of the chair. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/46 "2018-01-01T00:22:03Z")
**Moderating: General Reminder** Some of the comments here are veering into the personal, and teasing references to the OP’s posting history, shots at his username, etc. are not appropriate for this thread. There’s a Pit for that. Please don’t threadshit. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/47 "2018-01-01T00:26:16Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > **Moderating: General Reminder** > > Some of the comments here are veering into the personal, and teasing references to the OP’s posting history, shots at his username, etc. are not appropriate for this thread. There’s a Pit for that. \*\*Please don’t threadshit. > \*\* > Thanks! (bolding mine) A little veering there, eh? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/48 "2018-01-01T00:53:45Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I don’t see that the OP claims he had worn the jeans elsewhere without the dye bleeding. He says he “didn’t think about that before I sat down”, which doesn’t sound like he was surprised the jeans might bleed, just that he wasn’t thinking about it in the moment. > > AFAIK there’s no way for the fabric of the _chair_ to cause the _jeans_ to bleed, although the dye could be more obvious/harder to clean depending on the fabric of the chair. Minimally it seems highly improbable that the op put the jeans on for the very first time and came directly over to his friend’s condo without sitting anywhere else in the meantime. Suede (the real stuff, not the synthetic microfiber suede) is known to be an _extremely easily stained_ material. You can, and should, use a protectant on it, and know how to clean it in case of staining. A guest should not be expected to know of its fragility and might reasonably think “leather = durable and tough”. The person _who chose that material_ for his beloved chair is reasonably expected however to be aware of special nature of the choice. Reupholstering a chair in a light tone real suede? My dad ran a reupholstery shop and he would have simply refused to do it. A velvet for an antique Louis XV Bergere maybe. Suede was a stupid choice. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/49 "2018-01-01T01:09:55Z")
And to explain - suede stains so exceptionally easily because the nap that makes it so soft is a huge amount of natural material porous surface area. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/50 "2018-01-01T01:21:17Z")
> [@DkTrdGuy](#): > > … > > My friend got all bug-eyed, walked over, and pulled me up. At our horror, my express dark blue jeans released some blue dye onto his precious chair. I didn’t think about that before I sat down. He tried to clean it, but it made the fabric look worse. My friend is pissed and wants me to pay $650 to get it re-reupholstered. > > I don’t think it is my fault! Chairs are made to be sat on. … I am kinda with the OP here. Obviously the friend, who chose BEIGE SUEDE for his chairs, knew that they were, let’s see what’s the term, I think delicate. So this is kind of on him. (Cite: the friend immediately got all bug-eyed. So he knew.) Chairs are to be sat on, and if your chairs are too delicate to be sat on, they should be displayed behind velvet ropes. If they are too delicate to be sat on except by people in immaculate evening dress, they should be put away until you have a situation where all your guests are in immaculate evening dress. If you have a chair that’s so delicate that it may collapse under the weight of one of your friends and you invite that friend over, put that chair in the garage for the duration. And so on. Or at the very least the friend should say, quickly, “Oh, no, don’t sit there!” Now of course the polite thing is for the OP to offer to pay for getting the damage fixed, and for the owner of the chair to say, “Oh no, hey, it’s no problem.” Looks like an etiquette breakdown all around. I think the fair thing to do is to split the difference. ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/51 "2018-01-01T01:58:01Z")
It’s a sign of a distressed friendship that the owner of the chair wants the sitter to pay for the damage caused by normal use of the object in question. Not to say that you shouldn’t oblige him, but it’s not a good sign. I’m very very suspicious that the roles are actually reversed and he’s trying to get support that his friend owes it to him to pay for the damage despite it being caused by perfectly ordinary use. As noted above, he’s very very careful to play up the importance of the chair and indicate the reason the problem occurred. I don’t think I’d ever admit to anyone ever that I would need a friend because of things he has, women he knows, or knowledge he sometimes bestows on me. It sounds a whole lot more like they’re the kind of things that someone thinks makes them an important friend for someone else, important enough that he can get them to pay for this despite it being a dick move. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/52 "2018-01-01T05:28:17Z")
> [@glowacks](#): > > It’s a sign of a distressed friendship that the owner of the chair wants the sitter to pay for the damage caused by normal use of the object in question. On what planet is staining someone’s chair considered normal use? ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/53 "2018-01-01T06:17:35Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Minimally it seems highly improbable that the op put the jeans on for the very first time and came directly over to his friend’s condo without sitting anywhere else in the meantime. I was not suggesting that he had, although that wouldn’t be the fishiest thing about this story. I was pointing out that the OP did not say he’d worn the jeans before without problems. For all we know they’d been bleeding all over the place. Even if they hadn’t been noticeably bleeding before, jeans that are likely to bleed are typically sold with a warning label. The OP didn’t claim to have been surprised when the dye transferred onto the chair, he just said hadn’t thought about it before sitting down. If the incident actually happened as described, then I do not consider it plausible that the OP was unaware that his jeans might leave dye on a light-colored chair. ---
**Author:** ![Locrian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/locrian/32/14146_2.png) [@Locrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Locrian)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/54 "2018-01-01T07:46:04Z")
I’m still LOLing at the jeans part. What brand are these jeans? I’ve only worn Levi’s my whole life and never had a bleeding incident with any color. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/55 "2018-01-01T08:05:43Z")
I think the OP is definitely in the wrong. 1. The friend has two special, precious, antique chairs that he’s spent a lot of money on and is very proud of. You don’t just throw yourself down suddenly and roughly on the chair without asking permission. That would be highly disrespectful at any time. 2. The jeans with the weird dye (I’ve also never heard of this happening before) are 100% the OP’s responsibility. If you damage someone’s property, even unintentionally, it’s right that you should pay for it. The friend shouldn’t have to pay. 3. If your only interest in the person is using him for betting advice and introductions to women - then he’s not a friend, he’s someone you’re taking advantage of. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/56 "2018-01-01T16:44:05Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > … For all we know they’d been bleeding all over the place. … If the guest was indeed aware that his jeans might stain the chair’s fabric then no question he was negligent and in the wrong. **DkTrdGuy**? And also to **DkTrdGuy** , what cleaning method was attempted? Meanwhile the responses in this thread illustrate that _many_ people are _not_ aware that many blue jeans, and not even restricted to new ones, can stain light colored suede, or that light colored suede is particularly prone to staining and color transfer. If, for the sake of the hypothetical, one of the many posters here who are unaware of those two facts, sat in a chair as an invited guest to the house, and some color transfer occurred, would they feel they _owed_ the owner the $650 cost of a complete redo? Let me give a different hypothetical and see how people feel about it. A friend just got delivery of a Tesla Model 3 that he is very excited about and you come over to look at it. The hood is open and you go and close it the way all of us normally close a hood. The Model 3 however has a hood that needs to be closed in a very specific manner and if not it can crease. You damage the hood closing it. Should you pay for your friend to buy a new Model 3? For the cost of replacing the hood? Also a Bergere has a loose seat cushion. Even if the cushion was irreparably damaged it could be reupholstered without redoing the whole chair. (Potential problem being the exact match between pieces of suede.) **GreenWyvern** , a Bergere is also a solid piece of furniture with a deep seat, not a delicate parlor chair. It was a chair designed as a _comfy_ chair, a lounge chair, as close to an “easy chair” as the era got. It can handle even a football player flopping into it and the average antique Bergere has been “flopped into” many many times. The damage was not caused by how the guest sat in the chair and would have occurred no matter how delicately he lowered himself down. ---
**Author:** ![ZonexandScout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zonexandscout/32/544_2.png) [@ZonexandScout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZonexandScout)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/57 "2018-01-01T17:20:29Z")
I think that the friend has created an “attractive nuisance” by deliberately placing chairs that are easy to stain in a convenient location. The OP is an invitee who had every right to expect that he would not suffer any harm by availing himself of the chair(s). The monetary value of the emotional distress suffered by the OP after learning he had unintentionally damaged a valuable chair surely runs into five figures. The OP deserves compensation. Retain an attorney…immediately. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/58 "2018-01-01T17:31:00Z")
**DSeid** I basically agree with you that a great deal hinges on what OP knew and what it is reasonable for people to be expected to know. For some reason your Tesla analogy isn’t working for me though! Immediately pops up my parents as an inner voice insisting you leave others’ stuff in the same state you found it in–which, among other things, meant if a thing was open, you left it open, if closed, you left it closed. So in a case like that, I’d definitely feel responsibility to pay for the hood. In the chair/jeans case, I’d feel responsibility to help even though I didn’t know about the jean staining thing, simply because I had (apparently) “plopped down” on a pretty precious and old piece of furniture. I’d feel like after treating something fragile with such little care, I had some onus to make up for the consequences _whatever_ they were. Having said that, if I didn’t perceive myself as “plopping” and treating something fragile without care, if instead I saw myself as simply _sitting_ on a thing _made for sitting_, I’d feel a lot less responsibility. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/59 "2018-01-01T17:33:13Z")
> [@ZonexandScout](#): > > I think that the friend has created an “attractive nuisance” by deliberately placing chairs that are easy to stain in a convenient location. The OP is an invitee who had every right to expect that he would not suffer any harm by availing himself of the chair(s). The monetary value of the emotional distress suffered by the OP after learning he had unintentionally damaged a valuable chair surely runs into five figures. The OP deserves compensation. Retain an attorney…immediately. Slightly on topic: I was once at an art exhibit which had a sign next to it prominently begging museum goers not to touch the exhibit. Of course such signs are fairly common but this one was _really_ prominent and there was something about the exhibit–its visual texture, its brightness, the round and weird shape of it–that to me just begged to be touched. I was a kid–a high schooler but anyway–and I touched it. And my fingers were immediately stained with whatever weird chalky dye-filled substance was covering the exhibit. To this day I am not sure whether that was part of the art’s intended experience, or if I just touched something I wasn’t supposed to touch. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602/60 "2018-01-01T17:56:44Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > To this day I am not sure whether that was part of the art’s intended experience, or if I just touched something I wasn’t supposed to touch. The latter. Some art is just incredibly fragile. And, probably shouldn’t be displayed where the public can [ruin it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-W_MQzyNjs) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/friend-claimed-i-ruined-his-late-grandmas-reupholstered-chair-wants-me-to-pay-for-damages/805602.md?page=4)