A federal court granted summary judgment to defendant Snapple in a lawsuit accusing
Snapple Beverage Corp. of misleading consumers by labeling drinks as “all natural” even though they are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Weiner et al. v. Snapple Beverage Corp., No. 1:07-cv-08742 (S.D.N.Y.).

We have commented on the growing and alarming trend of plaintiffs’ lawyers concocting consumer fraud class action claims against products, even when consumers were not injured and got basically what they paid for, because of some alleged ambiguity in the label or old-fashioned puffing.

Snapple Beverage Corporation was founded in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1972. Snapple began selling and marketing its teas and juice drinks in the late 1980s. In marketing its beverages, Snapple focused on, among other things, flavor, innovation, and humor. Snapple became known for its quirky personality and funny advertising, as well as its colorful product labels and beverage names. For instance, Snapple’s television advertisements featured, among other things, Snapple bottles dressed in wigs and hats, singing in a Backstreet-esque “boy-band,” running with the bulls (hamsters with cardboard horns) in Spain, and performing synchronized swimming.

When Snapple entered the beverages market in the late 1980s, it avoided putting preservatives, which were then commonly found in some similar beverages, in its teas and juice drinks. Snapple was able to do so by using a “hot-fill” process, which uses high-temperature heat pasteurization to preserve products immediately before bottling. Snapple also used 16-ounce glass bottles instead of aluminum cans or plastic. Hence the term on their label “All Natural.”

From their inception, Snapple’s beverages were sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. HFCS is made from corn ( a natural product last time we checked), and its primary constituents are glucose and fructose, the sugars that comprise table sugar and honey (which also sound pretty natural). It is undisputed that Snapple disclosed the inclusion of HFCS in the ingredient list that appears on the label of every bottle of Snapple that was labeled “All Natural.”

Readers may recall from our previous post, that here plaintiffs sued seeking to represent a nationwide class of consumers who made purchases between 2001 and 2009 in New York of Snapple beverages labeled “all natural” and which contained high fructose corn syrup.  The plaintiffs alleged they paid a premium for the company’s drinks as a result of the all natural claim.

Judge Cote denied the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification last year, finding that plaintiffs had not proposed a suitable methodology for establishing the critical elements of causation and injury on a class-wide basis. Without a reliable methodology, plaintiffs had not shown that they could prove at trial, using common evidence, that putative class members in fact paid a premium for the beverage. Because individualized inquiries as to causation, injury, and damages for each of the millions of putative class members would predominate over any issues of law or fact common to the class, plaintiffs’ claim could not be certified under Rule 23(b)(3).

Snapple then moved for summary judgment on the two named plaintiffs’ individual claims
under New York’s consumer protection laws, as well as claims of unjust enrichment and breach of express warranty.

Jurisdiction was predicated on CAFA, so a preliminary issue was whether the court retained jurisdiction after the denial of class certification. The statute does not speak directly to
the issue of whether class certification is a prerequisite to federal jurisdiction, and the Second Circuit has not addressed the issue. The circuits that have considered the issue, however, have uniformly concluded that federal jurisdiction under CAFA does not depend on class certification. See Cunningham Charter Corp. v. Learjet, Inc., 592 F.3d 805, 806 (7th Cir. 2010); United Steel, Paper & Forestry, Rubber, Mfg., Energy, Allied Indus. & Serv. Workers Int’l Union, AFL-CIO, CLC
v. Shell Oil Co., 602 F.3d 1087, 1092 (9th Cir. 2010); Vega v. T-Mobile USA, Inc., 564 F.3d 1256, 1268 n.12 (11th Cir. 2009).

The court granted the motion, finding that the named plaintiffs had failed to show that they were injured as a result of Snapple’s labeling.  According to Snapple, because the plaintiffs had not offered evidence showing either the price they paid for Snapple or the prices charged by competitors for comparable beverages, they could not demonstrate that they paid a premium for the “All Natural” Snapple product and thus could not show harm stemming from the allegedly misleading label.  Neither of the plaintiffs had any record of his purchases of Snapple. Their most recent purchases were made in 2005 and 2007, or 3 to 5 years before their deposition testimony was taken. Not surprisingly, they had only vague recollections of the locations, dates, and prices of their purchases of Snapple. Besides being unable to establish the actual price they paid for the Snapple products at issue here, the plaintiffs have offered no other evidence from which to
calculate the premium they paid for Snapple. The court agreed that plaintiffs failed to prove that they paid more for Snapple’s products than they would have for comparable beverages.

As for the breach of expressed warranty claim, an injured party is entitled to the benefit of its bargain, measured as the difference between the value of the product as warranted by the manufacturer and its true value at the time of the transaction. Because the plaintiffs
had not demonstrated that they purchased Snapple’s drinks in reliance on the “all natural”
label, they could not show any such difference in value.