A  federal district court recently dismissed a putative class action alleging the defendant food company mislabeled its Florida’s Natural products as 100% orange juice despite the alleged addition of compounds to mask the taste caused by pasteurization. See Veal v. Citrus World Inc., No. 2:12-cv-00801 (N.D. Ala. 1/8/13).

The plaintiff asserted that because the label did not mention that flavoring and aroma are added, consumers desirous of 100% pure and fresh squeezed orange juice had been deceived into purchasing Florida’s Natural.  The plaintiff did not aver that he personally ever consumed Florida’s Natural orange juice or that he suffered any ill health effects from consumption of the same, but rather alleged only that he purchased it, repeatedly, over the six years preceding the first complaint.  The essence of his claim concerned the question of how much processing is permissible in a product labeled as “fresh” “100%” or “pure.”

Despite plaintiff’s numerous allegations as to the general conduct of the orange juice industry, the court found the plaintiff had failed to state an actual, concrete injury. He stated he did not know store-bought orange juice was not fresh squeezed, but nowhere alleged any harm from its purchase or consumption. He did not even claim that upon learning packaged orange juice was not truly “fresh”, he had to resort to squeezing his own oranges. In other words, despite plaintiff’s protestations that he did not receive the product he believed he was purchasing, he made no allegation that he had stopped purchasing what he considered to be an inferior product in favor of
purchasing what he actually sought, which is apparently unpasteurized fresh squeezed orange juice.

In an attempt to save his claim and demonstrate an injury worthy of finding standing, the plaintiff argued that he did not receive the “benefit of the bargain” of what he believed he was actually purchasing. He professed to compare the cost of defendant’s orange juice to an orange juice concentrate, and alleged the difference between them is proof of his loss. This theory did not rise to the level of a “concrete and particularized” injury as opposed to a “conjectural or hypothetical” one. Plaintiff did not allege what the “higher value charged” was or what the orange juice supposedly “would have been worth” if it was “as warranted.” He did not show what products he actually bought, when he bought them, or where he bought them, much less what he paid.

From a legal standpoint, many courts have held that “benefit of the bargain” theories of injury like plaintiff’s, where a plaintiff claims to have paid more for a product than the plaintiff would have paid had the plaintiff been fully informed (or that the plaintiff would not have purchased the product at all), do not confer standing. See In re Fruit Juice Products Marketing and Sales Practices
Litigation, 831 F.Supp.2d 507 (D. Mass. 2011); see also Birdsong v. Apple, Inc., 590 F.3d 955, 961-62 (9th Cir. 2009) (noting potential for hearing loss from improper iPod use was not sufficient to state an injury for standing); cf. Rivera v. Wyeth-Ayerst Labs., 283 F.3d 315, 319-21 (5th Cir. 2002); McKinnis v. Kellogg USA, 2007 WL 4766060, *4 (C.D.Cal.2007); Sugawara v. Pepsico, Inc., 2009 WL 1439115 (E.D.Cal.2009). Young v. Johnson & Johnson, 2012 WL 1372286 (D.N.J.2012).

The plaintiff also complained that even though the FDA does require that defendant label its product as “pasteurized orange juice,” all of defendant’s other alleged representations were voluntary, and thus not within the protection of the FDA. Because the court found the plaintiff lacked standing to pursue his claims, the court did not have to rely on the impact of the extensive FDA regulations governing orange juice,  Nevertheless, the court noted, defendant labeled its orange juice in accordance with FDA regulations. The plaintiff could not dispute that the defendant’s product is “squeezed from our Florida oranges” or “100% orange juice.” Rather, his focus was that the squeezing and pasteurization is performed on a massive scale, and that the pasteurization process destroyed the flavor, causing ingredients already present in orange juice to be replaced in the marketed juice.

However, said the court, the fact that the plaintiff may have believed defendant hired individuals to hand squeeze fresh oranges one by one into juice cartons, then boxed up and delivered the same all over the country does not translate into a concrete injury to plaintiff upon his learning that beliefs about commercially grown and produced orange juice were incorrect.  By its very definition under FDA guidelines, pasteurized orange juice is orange juice (1) that has been processed and treated with heat, (2) in which the “pulp and orange oil may [have] been adjusted in accordance with good manufacturing practice,” and (3) which may have been “adjusted” by the addition of concentrated orange juice ingredients or sweeteners. Clearly, the defendant was selling pasteurized orange juice while labeling it “pasteurized orange juice.” Although the plaintiff objected to such labeling, in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, he purchased a product labeled as pasteurized orange juice and then complained that it was pasteurized.

No standing, complaint dismissed with no leave to amend yet again.