Beneath a Wednesday news cycle already full of tariff drama, the lawsuit landed quietly, as most class actions do. However, the federal court filing in Seattle was not the same. It directly addressed Nintendo, one of the most well-known brands in American living rooms, and posed a query that legal experts have been silently debating for months. Who really owns the refund if a company raises prices due to a tariff and that tariff turns out to be unlawful?
Two players believe they do. Prashant Sharan in Washington and Gregory Hoffert in California. By all accounts, regular consumers are the ones who most likely noticed the Switch accessories had increased by a few dollars while standing in a Target aisle sometime last spring. They didn’t cause any trouble. They made the payment. They then bided their time. They reportedly began doing the math after the Supreme Court declared in February that Trump’s IEEPA tariffs were unconstitutional.
| Company / Case Information | Details |
|---|---|
| Company Named in Suit | Nintendo of America Inc. |
| Plaintiffs | Gregory Hoffert (California) and Prashant Sharan (Washington) |
| Court | U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington |
| Date Filed | April 22, 2026 |
| Law Firm Representing Plaintiffs | Emery |
| Class Period | February 2025 through February 2026 |
| Tariff Statute Involved | International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) |
| Supreme Court Ruling Date | February 2026 (IEEPA tariffs deemed unlawful) |
| Estimated Refund Pool | Roughly $166 billion across more than 330,000 importers |
| Nintendo’s Reported Refund Claim | Approximately $1.1 billion |
| Core Allegation | Unjust enrichment — collecting tariff costs from buyers and refunds from the federal government |
| Relief Sought | Pass-through of refunds to affected consumers, plus interest |
It’s an odd math problem. It’s not really disputed that Nintendo, like hundreds of other importers, had incorporated the tariff into its retail pricing. The plaintiffs contend that the business is now in a position to get the same sum of money twice. after arriving at the register. once, with interest, from the US Treasury. The framing seems almost too tidy, but after reading the complaint, it’s difficult to deny that the reasoning makes sense.
Nintendo hasn’t made many public statements. At this point, businesses hardly ever do. However, there seems to be more silence than usual, in part because Nintendo filed a lawsuit against the federal government in March to recover its tariff money, which most reports estimate to be worth $1.1 billion. As a result, the business has already stated that the tariffs were unfair. The same argument is now being used against it by its own clients.
The price tags are still where they were last summer if you walk into any electronics store this month. Tariffs increased, prices increased, tariffs were reduced, and prices remained unchanged. This case is intriguing in part because of its stickiness. Economists have been writing about the asymmetry between how quickly costs rise and how slowly they fall once the pressure eases for decades. Pricing rarely runs in reverse.
As this develops, it seems like Nintendo is just the first domino. The government has stated that processing claims will take 60 to 90 days after the refund portal opened earlier this month. Importers are waiting in line. Attorneys are observing. It’s likely that someone is already creating talking points for a Costco supply meeting. Anyone who purchased, well, nearly anything imported during that window will have access to the playbook if the Hoffert and Sharan complaint prevails in an early motion to dismiss.
It is genuinely unclear if the court will accept the unjust enrichment theory. Pass-through claims are infamously complicated; many plaintiffs have previously struggled to determine the precise amount of a price increase that resulted from the tariff, inflation, or standard margin protection. Nintendo’s optics are still poor. Gaining a billion-dollar windfall while gamers had to pay premium prices for a full year is not a tale that holds up over time. It’s the kind of thing that, like these things, lingers silently.
