and its legal counsel. In March 1993, the union filed a class-action lawsuit against Ernst, charging the retailer with failing to pay employees for work done on their own time. The union, representing 450 of Ernst's Seattle area employees, had been boycotting the hardware chain since November 1992 when their contract expired on November 1. The union sued Ernst again in August 1993 for knowingly selling toilets that violate state water conservation requirements. Ernst later announced it would stop selling the specific toilets. Decline In June 1994, Ernst announced plans to go public and to raise $50 million through a stock sale to open 55 superstores over the next three years. The company began opening the superstores, averaged at , in 1991. At the time, Ernst was operating 77 stores in eight U.S. states. Ernst later delayed their initial stock offering, but later resumed their offering and went public in September 1994. In January 1996, Ernst reported a $47.6 million loss in its fourth-quarter, nearly twice what the retailer made in the past four years. At the same time, Ernst announced the cancellation of plans for 13 new stores and the closure of nine stores. On July 12, 1996, Ernst filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and announced the closure of 25 stores. The filing came after Ernst reported a loss of nearly $116 million in the company's past three quarters. On November 12, despite the chain's attempt to remain in business, Ernst announced it would close its remaining 53 stores and sell off the remainder of its operations. At the time, Ernst was operating 53 stores in six U.S. states and had about 2,000 full and part-time employees. Ernst began its final going-out-of-business sale on November 23. Malmo Nursery Charles Malmo, an immigrant from Norway, founded a seed store on Second Avenue in Seattle in 1893. Malmo was credited with being first in the Northwest to propagate and grow his own nursery stock rather than import ornamental shrubs from Japan, the Netherlands and England. In 1930, he opened the first "garden department store" on the Pacific Coast, selling all that was needed for the "most elaborate garden, from seeds to large trees," as he humbly asserted during the opening festivities. His son Clark bought to cultivate at the present site of University Village shopping mall. Many of the mature yards surrounding old Laurelhurst homes in Seattle today were the work