A fifth tariff-related consumer complaint has landed on Costco's doorstep, and this one comes from the opposite side of the country from the earlier filings. According to Top Class Actions, a shopper named Elizabeth Howell filed a proposed class action against Costco Wholesale Corp. on November 6 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, where it is docketed as Case No. 1:26-cv-07168. The complaint accuses the warehouse giant of pushing the cost of now-invalidated import duties onto members at the register and then keeping the money. None of this has been tested in court, and every claim below is an allegation from the plaintiff's side.
What the Howell complaint alleges
Howell's suit centers on tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, known as IEEPA, during the Trump administration. As described by Top Class Actions, the complaint says Costco, as the importer of record on those goods, "shifted the economic burden of the tariffs to consumers." The filing alleges the retailer did not simply raise prices on products that carried a tariff. It claims prices also went up on U.S.-sourced goods that were never tariffed in the first place.
That second point is the more unusual part of the complaint. Most tariff pass-through arguments follow a straight line from an imported item to a higher shelf price. Howell's version is broader, suggesting that the price pressure spread across the warehouse floor. Whether the evidence supports that theory is a question for discovery, if the case ever gets that far.
The proposed class would cover anyone in the United States who bought Costco goods between February 2025 and February 2026 that were either subject to IEEPA tariffs or sold at prices allegedly inflated because of them. The suit asserts unjust enrichment and violations of New York consumer protection law. It asks for class certification, damages, attorneys' fees, costs and a jury trial.
The refund theory
The heart of the claim is a two-step argument. Costco allegedly raised prices to absorb the tariff cost. The Supreme Court then struck the tariffs down, opening a refund pathway for importers. Howell alleges Costco has returned none of the passed-on costs to consumers and has no plans to, leaving the company poised to collect what the complaint calls an "inequitable windfall." The filing says Costco is "unjustly enriching itself at their expense."
Who is behind the filing
Top Class Actions lists Hunter J. Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik NSPR Law Services LLC and Shayna E. Sacks of Napoli Shkolnik PLLC as the attorneys on the complaint. The article does not carry any statement from Costco in response, and no later rulings or developments in the case were reported as of its publication on November 11.
How the tariffs got struck down
The legal backdrop matters for understanding why these suits exist at all. Beginning in February 2025, the administration used IEEPA to impose sweeping duties on goods from a range of countries, including Canada, China and Mexico. Retailers that import heavily felt it immediately. Court filings in the earlier Costco cases say roughly one-third of the company's products are imported and that it ranked among the top 35 U.S. importers in 2024.
On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that IEEPA does not give the president tariff authority. The decision was 6-3. On March 4, the Court of International Trade ordered the duties refunded to all importers of record, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection opened an online refund portal on April 20. The agency estimated that 330,000 importers had paid about $166 billion across more than 53 million shipments as of March 4.
Here is the gap the lawsuits are built on. Refunds flow to the importer of record, which is the company that paid the duty at the border. Nothing in that process automatically sends money to the shoppers who may have paid more at checkout. Goldman Sachs estimated that U.S. consumers were shouldering about two-thirds of the new tariff costs, a figure cited in the Illinois complaint described below.
Four earlier cases, one new one
The Howell filing joins a cluster of suits that dates to March. According to Open Class Actions, four proposed class actions were filed against Costco that month, and Howell appears to be the first reported addition since. The tracker lists the following cases.
Stockov in Chicago
Stockov v. Costco Wholesale Corp., No. 1:26-cv-02734, was filed March 11 in the Northern District of Illinois and is assigned to Judge Steven C. Seeger. Matthew Stockov, represented by Korein Tillery LLC, seeks to represent a nationwide class of buyers of IEEPA-tariffed goods from February 1, 2025, through February 24, 2026, along with an Illinois subclass. The claims include consumer fraud, unjust enrichment and money had and received.
Costco moved to dismiss on May 18. In that motion the company argued, "None of those claims is ripe, as Costco has received no tariff refunds yet." It also said Stockov's own allegations show he freely chose to buy products at accurately posted prices. The plaintiff opposed on June 16, Costco replied on June 30, and a sur-reply followed on August 12 in which Stockov's lawyers argued the no-refunds point had "evaporated." As of the latest docket entry on September 30, there was no ruling.
Briggs in Seattle
Briggs v. Costco Wholesale Corp., No. 2:26-cv-01064, was filed March 27 in the Western District of Washington by seven Costco members represented by Emery Reddy, PC. It pleads unjust enrichment, money had and received, and Washington, Ohio and California consumer statutes, and it seeks declaratory relief. That case drew attention for quoting Costco executives. The complaint cites a May 2025 earnings call at which CFO Gary Millerchip said prices were raised on certain Central and South American products "because we felt that was something that the member would be able to absorb." Costco has said it raised prices in response to market forces and denies misleading members.
Washington state court and Puerto Rico
Two further cases, Gower v. Costco in King County Superior Court and Ortiz v. Costco in the District of Puerto Rico, are known mainly through Costco's own quarterly report, which describes them as raising state consumer protection laws and equitable doctrines. Open Class Actions notes it has not reviewed those complaints, and Costco moved to dismiss Gower.
Possible consolidation
There is also a procedural wrinkle that could affect all of these cases. According to Open Class Actions, plaintiffs in other tariff suits asked the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to combine 25 retailer suits against 15 retailers under the name In re Retailer Tariff Litigation, MDL No. 3202. The request includes Stockov and Briggs and proposes Judge Seeger or Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow to oversee it. A decision had not been found as of November 2. Whether a New York case filed days ago would be swept in is not something the reporting available addresses.
Where Costco stands on the refunds
Costco's public position on the money has shifted as the year progressed. The company sued the government in the Court of International Trade on November 28, 2025, to recover its IEEPA duties, according to the Stockov complaint. After the Supreme Court ruling, CEO Ron Vachris said any refunds would go toward lower prices and better value for members.
By its fiscal fourth quarter, those refunds had begun to arrive. On its September earnings call, Costco reported $184 million in tariff refunds for the quarter, made up of $174 million in duties and $10 million in interest. Millerchip said the amount was a little over one-third of the total the company expects to receive, and that Costco had received a similar amount in the first quarter. Vachris said some of the dollars were reinvested "predominantly through price reductions on a number of items in the second half of the quarter, including everyday items in produce, meat and beverages and some nonfood items such as home furnishings and hardware."
Plaintiffs have attacked that approach head on. In the Illinois case, the complaint argued that future price cuts help future shoppers rather than the people who paid the higher prices, and a filing called Costco's lower-prices explanation "barely more than shapeless adspeak," according to Open Class Actions. Costco's counter, in its own filings, is that the plaintiff "got what he paid for" and that the company never suggested it would refund part of the price later. Howell's complaint, as summarized, again says Costco has not returned the passed-on costs and has no plans to.
What this means for Costco members
For the ordinary member, the practical answer right now is that there is nothing to claim. Open Class Actions states plainly that no class has been certified, no court has found Costco liable, and there is no settlement, claim form or payout deadline in any of the Costco tariff cases. Top Class Actions, in its Howell write-up, offers no joining instructions either, only links to its general lists of open lawsuits and settlements. A proposed class member generally does not need to do anything at this stage, and anyone with questions about rights in the case should consult a qualified attorney.
The cases do raise a question that reaches well beyond one retailer. When a government collects an unlawful charge from a company and the company has already passed it along in prices, who is entitled to the refund? Top Class Actions notes a separate tariff suit by two customers against Apple, and the multidistrict request covers 15 retailers, so the question is being put to courts across the retail sector. Costco happens to be the most visible target because of its membership model, its stated thin margins and its executives' own recorded comments.
For Costco, the new filing adds another venue and another set of lawyers to a defense that was previously concentrated in Illinois and Washington. The timing is notable as well. The company has already begun cycling refunds back into price cuts, and the longer the pass-through argument sits unresolved, the more refund dollars will have moved. Whether courts treat that reinvestment as a fair answer or as beside the point is exactly what the pending motions will begin to settle.
The ripeness fight to watch
The most closely watched issue so far is ripeness, the legal idea that a court should not decide a dispute that depends on events that have not yet happened. Costco leaned on it in May, when it said it had received no refunds. By August, the company's own filing acknowledged it had received about a third of what it is owed, and argued the plaintiff's injury "remains hypothetical unless and until Costco receives all of the relevant refunds." Plaintiffs say the argument has weakened with every refund check.
That dispute will likely shape how the New York case unfolds. Howell filed after Costco had publicly reported more than $184 million in refunds, which may make the ripeness defense harder to apply in her case than it was when Stockov and Briggs were first filed. That is a reasonable expectation rather than a reported fact, and the Eastern District of New York has not yet addressed it.
Status and what comes next
Several things are worth tracking over the coming months. The first is the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, whose decision on MDL No. 3202 could fold some or all of the Costco cases into a single proceeding. The second is Judge Seeger's ruling on Costco's motion to dismiss in Stockov, which has been fully briefed since the summer. The third is Costco's next earnings report, which the company has said will continue to give information on tariff refunds and the reinvestment of those dollars, items Millerchip described as nonrecurring and expected to affect results into fiscal year 2027.
Costco has not been quoted responding to the Howell allegations in the coverage reviewed for this report. The company's stance in its earlier cases has been to deny misleading members and to attribute price changes to market forces, and nothing in the reporting indicates a different approach here. Until a court rules on the merits or the parties settle, the allegations remain just that.
