CBD marketers can learn something from the food industry. And it has nothing to do with the regulatory morass around whether CBD can be legally added to foods. It’s about managing the risk of consumer false advertising litigation. Lawsuits filed in California and New York help illustrate what kinds of cases are already being brought
The Ad Law Access Podcast Now Available in iTunes
Kelley Drye & Warren LLP announced the launch of the Ad Law Access podcast – a new podcast from its advertising law and privacy law groups. Hosted by Kelley Drye attorneys, including Christie Grymes Thompson, Alysa Hutnik, John Villafranco, Gonzalo Mon, and Kristi Wolff, the podcast provides updates on advertising and policy law trends, issues,
Advertising and Privacy Law Workshop: Charlotte Edition
Please join us on May 1 in Charlotte for a half-day workshop covering the latest advertising and privacy law developments. This interactive event will provide an update on crucial consumer protection issues, deliver practical guidance and benchmarking, and offer an opportunity to connect with peers across a variety of industries.
This workshop will be open
Supreme Court Reverses Google Settlement But Ducks Ruling on Its Fairness
In February 2018, I reported on a 20-state objection brief, filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the Court to reverse the approval of the class action settlement in Gaos v. Google. That deal would have distributed a few million dollars to nonprofit groups, while the AGs wanted money paid to real people, even if
When Plaintiffs’ Class Counsel Face The Music
Last week, in Cline v. Touchtunes Music Corp., No. 18-1756, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Manhattan district judge’s decision to approve a low-cost class action settlement in what the judge termed a “nuisance” case, while basically zeroing out the $100,000 fee requested by the plaintiffs’ class counsel.
Defendants who have faced
FTC Can’t Challenge Prior Acts in Federal Court Says Third Circuit
In a decision that will limit the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) ability in both consumer protection and antitrust matters to bring certain claims in federal court, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held in FTC v. Shire Viropharma, Inc. that the FTC may only bring a case under Section 13(b) of the FTC Act when
CA Court Considers When Disclosures Can Modify Claims
Pop quiz: If you purchased a bottle of “One A Day” gummy vitamins, would you: (a) assume that you should take one a day; or (b) check the back of the label to figure out how many you should take? If you answered (a), and didn’t check the back of the label, you might have
Slack Fill Plaintiffs May Win Battles But Lose the War
Lawyers who file “slack-fill” cases against food manufacturers found a friendly venue in Missouri. Missouri has a broad consumer fraud law and multiple courts have denied motions to dismiss slack-fill claims pleaded under that statute. But the real fight in class actions—where the money is, in a bank robber’s parlance—is over class certification, and on Tuesday, a Missouri judge denied certification in one of the closely-watched slack-fill cases against a candy maker.
In White v. Just Born, Inc., a Missouri case against the maker of Mike and Ike® candies, it was no great shock that the Court denied multi-state class certification. Convincing a court to certify a multi-state class is a tough slog for plaintiffs in any state law-based case, especially so if the case has only one plaintiff, rather than a plaintiff from each of the states in question. Even a single-state class can pose the threat of massive statutory damages, however, so the real victory in White was the Court’s refusal to certify even a Missouri-only class.
The plaintiff in White bought two boxes of the defendant’s candy at a dollar store. He pleaded that he personally “attached importance” to the “size” of the candy boxes and thought he was buying “more Product than [he] actually received.” Bully for him, the Court thought, but “the question of whether any [consumer fraud] violation injured each class member will require individualized inquiry” because “if an individual [already] knew how much slack-fill was in a candy box before he purchased it, he suffered no injury.” It does not matter at the class certification stage that a “reasonable consumer” may have been deceived. What matters instead is whether the practice actually caused injury to all putative class members in a common and centrally determinable manner. In a slack-fill case over a dollar’s worth of candy, it seems, it cannot.
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Some Sanity on “Slack Fill”
The “Show Me” state of Missouri has not been kind to candy makers in cases where consumers allege that packages contain non-functional “slack fill.” Cases against the makers of Mike and Ike® candies, Raisinets®, and Reese’s® Pieces® all survived motions to dismiss within the last year or so, with judges finding that what “reasonable consumers”
Second Circuit Bounces Multistate “Natural” Class. Now, Keep An Eye On the Ninth Circuit
Early this year, a Ninth Circuit panel upended a major nationwide class action settlement because it found that the District Court had not sufficiently considered material differences among the 50 states’ relevant laws. I called that decision—now likely headed for en banc review–“Regrettable But Forgettable” because the district court should be able to correct the error the Ninth Circuit identified. The district court had not conducted any predominance analysis at all, which always is required, even for settlement classes. Had it done so, it very likely could have found that for settlement purposes, with no questions for a jury to try, variations in state law would not have been material.
Yesterday, the Second Circuit reminded us that for litigation classes, variations in state laws absolutely can and should tank class certification. Langan v. Johnson & Johnson Consumer Cos., No. 17-1605 (2d Cir. July 24, 2018) is a “natural” case, challenging that label on two several baby-oriented bath products. The plaintiff allegedly purchased some in Connecticut and contended that 20 other states have similar consumer fraud laws. The district court certified a 21-state class, after which J&J successfully petitioned the Second Circuit, under Rule 23(f), to hear an interlocutory appeal.
J&J tried to argue that the plaintiff lacked Article III (constitutional “case or controversy”) standing to sue on behalf of purchasers in other states, but the Second Circuit rejected that contention. “[A]s long as the named plaintiffs have standing to sue the named defendants, any concern about whether it is proper for a class to include out-of-state, nonparty class members with claims subject to different state laws is a question of predominance under Rule 23(b)(3), not a question of ‘adjudicatory competence’ under Article III.” The court recognized some tension in case law over this question, but thought that Supreme Court guidance counseled treating “modest variations between class members’ claims as substantive questions, not jurisdictional ones.”
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