by Stephen Gardner
On February 27, the Northern District of California issued an opinion on a motion to dismiss in Becerra v. The Coca-Cola Company. The court got the law right, but then ruled based on incorrect conclusions on disputed facts.
There are two parts to the opinion. First, the court analyzed Coke’s various attempts to avoid liability under state law, based on preemption and safe harbor, and rejected each attempt. So far, so good.
But then the court turned to Rule 9(b). Here, too, the court was generally correct on the law, but ruled based on its own beliefs of what a reasonable consumer would think.
For example, the court said that “a reasonable consumer would simply not look at the brand name Diet Coke and assume that consuming it, absent any lifestyle change, would lead to weight loss.”
The court is wrong. Diet Coke’s name itself indeed suggests (really, outright says) that it’s part of a diet, and many consumers do not know that reduced calories alone will not likely lead to weight loss. Consumers are not nutrition scientists, and often turn (wrongly, but encouraged by companies like Coke) to quick fixes. The FTC’s many weight loss cases are evidence of this.
The court is expert on law, but not on consumer behavior, and it erred in substituting its opinion of the facts—at the motion to dismiss stage—for a disputed merits question.
The court compounded its error with the unsupported statement that “Reasonable consumers would understand that Diet Coke merely deletes the calories usually present in regular Coke, and that the caloric reduction will lead to weight loss only as part of an overall sensible diet and exercise regimen dependent on individual metabolism.”
Again, the court wrongfully draws its own conclusions as to how consumers reasonably behave. The court is also wrong on the facts—Diet Coke did not “merely delete[] the calories usually present in regular Coke.” It also added aspartame, which is an artificial non-nutritive sweetener.
Consumers are chary of artificial sweeteners, with good reason. The Center for Science in the Public Interest says, “Three key studies funded by an independent lab (rather than by a maker of aspartame) found that the sweetener caused lymphomas, leukemias, kidney, and other cancers in rats and mice. That should be reason enough for the Food and Drug Administration to ban aspartame from the food supply, says CSPI. In addition, aspartame might cause headaches or other neurological symptoms in a small number of people.” (For a longer discussion of risks, see this article from CSPI's excellent magazine Nutrition Action Healthletter.)
The court concluded, “In order to overcome the otherwise sensible view of reasonable consumers that Diet Coke consumption alone will not lead to weight loss, the complaint would need to cite far more powerful evidence than is now provided to make a claim of fraud plausible.”
The court gave plaintiff the chance to file an amended complaint, saying that “Plaintiff must plead her best case.”
Let’s hope she does.
