Alexander Panelli, a consumer who bought sheets that Target markets as “100% cotton” and “800 thread count” sued Target for violating California consumer law, alleging that the thread counts were actually much lower. In his amended complaint, he noted that it is “physically impossible for cotton threads to be fine enough to allow for 600 or more threads in a single square inch of 100% cotton fabric.”
According to Target, and the district court, this impossibility meant that Target’s representations were not misleading to a reasonable consumer as a matter of law, relying on Moore v. Trader Joe’s, a 2021 Ninth Circuit decision, and thus dismissed the case.
Today, the Ninth Circuit reversed, explaining that the lower court, and Target, misread Moore. Moore involved a label of “100% New Zealand Manuka Honey.” There, the court had found there was “some ambiguity as to what 100% meant.” and that because of that ambiguity “reasonable
consumers would necessarily require more information before they could reasonably conclude Trader Joe’s label promised a honey that was 100% derived from a single, floral source.” That more information included the “impossibility of making a honey that is 100% derived from one floral source,” and other aspects of the packaging, which would “quickly dissuade a reasonable consumer from the belief that Trader Joe’s Manuka Honey was derived from 100% Manuka flower.”
In rejecting the application of Moore to this case, the Panelli court explained that the fact that the label on the sheets was not ambiguous meant that “the district court was not permitted to pull back the covers on Target’s claim and account for outside, contextual information in its reasonable consumer analysis.” Because “a reasonable consumer’s knowledge of textile manufacturing is likely limited to the fact that a higher thread count listed
on packaging indicates a higher quality sheet,” the court rejected Target’s argument that variances as to how to measure thread count made the label ambiguous to a reasonable consumer.
The court went on to explain that, while dismissal would be appropriate where a claim about a product is “so clearly false that no reasonable consumer would be deceived by it,” or where a consumer’s interpretation of the claim could be “unreasonable or fanciful,” that logic did not apply here. “Neither common knowledge nor common sense would cause a Target shopper to question the veracity of the claim on the bed sheet’s label that the product was of 800 thread count.” The district court’s holding, the court explained, would mean “manufacturers would face no liability for false advertising so long as the claims were wholly false—regardless of whether this falsity is generally knowable to consumers”–undermining the entire point of California consumer protection law.
The court remanded the case for further proceedings.
