The story sounds interesting...
- Yehuda Diamonds provide a well known, trademarked clarity treatment for diamonds (probably not only). Unusually, the company advertises the treatment openly and holds the upper ground tightly. They have to: fracture filling is also done by many others without 'TM'.
- Blue Nile did as little as usually done for treatment disclosure on emeralds - Tiffany does no better then a fine print, out of the way blanket statement. Rules are minimalistic - tend to come up on court more then over the counter [there are a couple of flamboyant litigation related to emeralds in recent memory].
- All diamonds on Blue come with independent lab reports stating, among others, enhancement status (GIA, AGS - better then just
tell-you-what-you-want-to-hear paper).
Other facts may be relevant, this is what comes to mind.
Drawing the line:
methinks: why not the same paper trail for emeralds?
Blue Nile must know what that 'paper' is good for better then most' - even I have lived long enough to have heard of 30 pointers with paper as a joke (before 'Blue Nile' times). This is not a business-as-usual shop; why should it get away with business-as-usual slack?
I can think of at least one reason why it shouldn't: perhaps invasive treatments on emerald are not big now [HERE], but a large dumpster list open to a trusty Blue Nile public... sounds like promising ground for drastic treatments to be born. Emerald filers are fairly low tech. And in the larger scheme of things, fracture filing can go very far [report on how far it went for rubies: HERE and possibly on emeralds themselves too HERE]...
Neither is an easy point to prove. 'Bet those lawyers involved have something more practical in mind for their settlement
2c
PS. speaking of the traditional treatment...
Richard Hughes gives a visual account (HERE), GIA has a timeline of treatment methods at hand (HERE). Just in case.
I have not heard of anything as drastic as the extreme ruby makeover done on emeralds. Do not know what could be possible. It is always too easy to 'cry wolf'! This is not an alarm, just some
cheap analogy (need to make clear).