There is a concept in the law called puffery and it’s great.
I cannot prove that to you that it’s great, however, because a legal concept’s greatness or lack of greatness is something entirely personal. And that is an excellent introduction to the concept.
The case that brings up “puffery” is Viggiano v. Hansen Natural Corp., decided by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, which is in Los Angeles. Although the case covers a number of important issues, the one I want to focus on is the claim that labeling the soda at issue with the word “premium” breached an express warranty under Section 2-313 of the Uniform Commercial Code. The court described the claim as follows:
Viggiano also alleges that Hansen’s statement that the beverage is a “premium soda” is a warranty that has been breached because the soda has “less than premium ingredients [due to the] presence of sucralose and acesulfame potassium.”
The court would have none of it.
The term “premium,” however, is mere puffery; it has no concrete, discernable [sic] meaning in the diet soda context, and thus cannot give rise to a breach of warranty claim.
The court was almost entirely right. “Premium” clearly cannot give rise to a breach of warranty claim; it is not, as Section 2-313 requires, “An[] affirmation of fact or promise made by the seller to the buyer which relates to the goods and becomes part of the basis of the bargain . . . .” But it does have a “discernible” meaning and anyone reading this blog knows what that meaning is, instinctively. It means you’re going to pay a higher price. Why? Because the retailer, wholesaler and manufacturer all believe they can get you to pay a higher price. If they are right, you will pay the higher price whether there is any inherent extra value in the goods or not. If they are wrong, the price will be lowered. That is the unbending law of economics.
(Parenthetically, I think it’s quite likely that Hansen’s called its diet soda, and also its club soda, which is pictured here, “premium” is be because its main line of sodas is marketed as “Natural Cane Soda” because it uses cane sugar instead of HFCS and they needed a word to fit in the same position on the logo of the sodas that don’t use sugar.)
But why do I think puffery is great? Because it helps leaven the conversation. It allows us to use poetry in advertising, not bureaucratic double-speak. And it stops unworthy lawsuits in their tracks.
Consider the world without puffery. I said we could never know that “puffery’ was “great”, but imagine if Kellogg’s could not have Tony the Tiger tell us that Frosted Flakes were “gr-r-reat!”
Or imagine the lawsuit when a flex-fuel train, running out of coal or diesel crossing the mountains, sues Good ‘n’ Plenty because their engine would not run on candy-coated licorice. I don’t want to live in that world.