They looked very much like genuine gloves and when I got them, they seemed decent quality. However, I came off my bike and my hand took a beating. The gloves were not leather; they were plastic – and the plastic embedded itself in my hand, resulting in an extremely painful 40 minutes as a nurse picked bits of plastic out from my hand with tweezers. I also had a fracture to my forearm. The spill was down to me. I fell off on my own on a cold, wet and greasy road. I wonder if I could sue the Chinese company for selling ‘knock-off gloves’ – is this realistic?
Answer
In short, no. Legally it is possible, but so difficult as to be realistically impossible. The gloves are clearly copies of the high-quality, GE-compliant Klim Dakar gloves that retail in the UK at £45-£55. You paid £8. The link you sent me had, as the first review, a buyer saying these were “only good for cycling” and “clearly a copy”, which came up with the listing. So the website had alerted you to the fact these were not genuine Klim gloves. The advert is quite careful. It clearly uses the (no doubt) heavily copyrighted Klim name, logo and style of glove presentation, and the gloves look a visual copy of the Dakar glove, but the advert says “motorcycle gloves”; it does not say they’re GE-compliant, nor speak to any safety aspects of the glove. If you were to have a fall in any glove, it would not protect your forearm – so you would not be able to show any causative link between your knock-off gloves and your worst injury. As to the hand injury, apart from an uncomfortable 40 minutes, your hand is completely recovered. It is a soft tissue injury, which is not worth a great deal. The internet sales site has an EU address but it’s not an EU country which recognises English Judgements after Brexit, so if you were to get a judgement you’d need to sue the sales site in the UK.
But you’d first be compelled to commence proceedings for service out of the jurisdiction – and you’d have to sue a Chinese company, with an EU address, when that EU country does not recognise UK judgements without a senior judge in the jurisdictional country accepting that you could bring such a claim in local law. If you got over that hurdle (you’d need to make an application to the EU court In the sum of €55 and, if your application failed, the potential costs of the internet company) you’d be unwise to try this without a local lawyer – budget €1,500. You’d then be left trying to enforce a judgement in an EU jurisdiction, against a Chinese company that would be able to defend the action on local law. In English law, your case is weak but arguable .. You have so many hurdles to get over, I’d learn one lesson from this: don’t buy safety-critical kit from Chinese websites that’s 25 per cent of the real kit’s cost. I don’t believe anyone would accept you thought you were buying real Klim gloves.
You got what you paid for. Technically, you have a narrow and difficult route to getting a few hundred pounds for your injuries. But even for a really experienced lawyer who is used to dealing with different jurisdictions, I would have to tread carefully. It really is not worth the effort for a small claim. Experience is a good teacher but the lessons are expensive.
Andrew Dalton
RiDE– June 2025
