This multidistrict litigation involves Simply Orange Juice,Minute Maid Pure Squeezed, and Minute Maid Premium. Plaintiffs alleged thatCoca-Cola falsely advertised these products as natural, when in fact they’re heavilyprocessed, pasteurized, deaerated, and flavored. FDA standards allegedlyrequire Coca-Cola to label Simply Orange and MM Pure Squeezed to show that they’vebeen processed above levels of “incidental additives” with orange oil, orangeessence, and other volatile and chemically engineered compounds, causing thebasic composition of the juice to differ from that of pure freshly squeezedjuice and requiring the addition of orange oil, orange essence, etc. to theingredients list on the product. Inaddition, MM Premium isn’t labeled to show that it has been dewatered, frozen,and reconstituted by melting frozen concentrate and mixing with water. Thus, plaintiffs alleged, consumers have beenpaying premium prices for juice they otherwise would’ve paid less for.
The challenged claims for Simply Orange were “100% puresqueezed,” “not from concentrate,” “Simply Orange,” “pure,” and “natural.” For MM Pure Squeezed: “pure-squeezed,” “100%pure squeezed,” and “never from concentrate.” For MM Premium: “100% puresqueezed,” “100% orange juice,” and “naturalorange goodness.” Coca-Cola moved todismiss.
Coca-Cola argued that the claims were expressly preempted,since the FDA has established standards for producing orange juice and labelingit, or relatedly barred by the safe harbor doctrine in that the FDA expresslypermitted these practices. Staterequirements identical to federal requirements or not within the scope of theFDCA and NLEA aren’t preempted; this was the case here, since plaintiffsalleged noncompliance with the FDCA. This also disposed of the safe harbor argument.
Next, Coca-Cola argued that plaintiffs might never have seenads for the products, but that didn’t matter. “Although some courts have established that a plaintiff lacks standingto challenge ads they did not see, these courts have done so because apresumption of reliance does not arise when class members are exposed to quitedisparate information from various representatives of a defendant.” But when the alleged falsity comes from anextensive and long-term ad campaign, reliance on specific ads isn’trequired. This was alleged here. In addition, plaintiffs pled sufficientinjury to have standing: that they paid premium prices they wouldn’t have paidfor truthfully labeled juice.
Coca-Cola argued that the challenged statements were merepuffery. Puffery can be exaggeratedclaims on which no reasonable consumer would rely or vague/highly subjectiveclaims of superiority. By contrast, a factual statement can be empiricallyfalsified or proven. The court couldn’tfind that the statements identified were puffery as a matter of law.
Discovery could proceed, limited to whether the products “containsynthetic flavors or orange pulp, oil, or essence at levels significantly inexcess of those found in raw processed orange juice or otherwise permitted byFDA regulations” and whether defendants added any water-soluble constituents oforange essence to their not-from-concentrate products.
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