City Attorney Accuses Ralphs of Overcharging at Some Stores : Supermarkets: The chain paid a fine in a similar case in 1992. The firm’s president says remedial action has been taken.

For the second time in less than two years, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office has filed criminal charges against Ralphs Grocery Co. for allegedly overcharging customers at some of its Los Angeles stores.

City Atty. Jim Hahn on Thursday filed 24 misdemeanor charges against Ralphs--Southern California’s third-largest grocery chain--and 10 of its store supervisors. The charges include 17 counts of false advertising and seven counts of overcharging customers at the checkout counter.

The accusations resulted from inspections by the Los Angeles County Department of Weights and Measures at 10 supermarkets in the San Fernando Valley and in central and west Los Angeles. The inspections found that the prices registered by computerized price scanners at the checkout counter were sometimes different from prices posted on the stores’ shelves, according to the city attorney’s office.

Ralphs paid $3,500 in fines to settle similar charges brought by the city attorney in 1992. Those charged in Thursday’s complaint could face fines ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 and could possibly serve six months in jail.

Ralphs President Al Marasca said Thursday that the company was made aware of the new allegations last fall and has since taken “substantial remedial action.” After the 1992 charges, the city attorney said that Ralphs had agreed to implement a $1-million training and price accuracy program for its staff.

Marasca said the Weights and Measures inspectors targeted expired shelf tags.

“There is no scan error,” Marasca said in a statement released Thursday. “These are human errors that occur when several hundred items go off sale at the same time and some of the special tags are not removed.”

Violators of laws relating to pricing are liable even if the inaccurate pricing is unintentional, said Deputy City Atty. Don Cocek. Cocek said the city had no evidence that the alleged violations were deliberate or part of Ralphs corporate policy.

According to the city attorney’s office, the Department of Weights and Measures’ random purchases of items at the targeted Ralphs stores indicated a significant error rate. The spot checks suggested that the scanners were inaccurate nearly 16% of the time, according to the city attorney’s office.