A California federal judge recently handed a victory to the Hershey Co. in a suit alleging the company falsely represented that its Brookside chocolate products have no artificial flavors. Clark v. Hershey Co., 18-cv-06113 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 15, 2019). U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted summary judgment in favor of Hershey on the basis of facts undermining plaintiffs’ contentions that they were misled by the products’ labeling and relied on the misleading labeling in…

The Seventh Circuit has remanded a lawsuit concerning beer advertising to the district court for failure to follow required procedures in issuing a preliminary injunction – the latest development in the case’s torturous procedural history. On May 24, 2019, Judge William Conley of the Western District of Wisconsin issued a preliminary injunction banning Anheuser-Busch from suggesting in its advertising that Miller Lite and Coors Lite contain corn syrup. With an interlocutory appeal from the May…

The Association of National Advertisers and the Brand Activation Association will be hosting their 41st annual Marketing Law Conference at the Marriott Marquis in San Diego, CA from November 4-6. Proskauer is a sponsor of the conference, and will be speaking on two separate panels. Lawrence Weinstein, the co-chair of Proskauer’s Intellectual Property Litigation Group and of our False Advertising and Trademark Practice, and partner Alexander Kaplan will lead a plenary panel titled “A View from…

In a recent application of the Supreme Court’s 2014 Lexmark decision on standing, Judge Katharine Hayden of the District of New Jersey held last month that an herbal extract manufacturer allegedly misled by its supplier into purchasing diluted saw palmetto extract lacked standing to bring a Lanham Act false advertising claim. Jiaherb, Inc. v. MTC Indus., Inc., No. 18-15532, 2019 WL 4785784 (D.N.J. Sept. 30, 2019). Jiaherb had purchased all of its saw palmetto…

As we wrote recently, the past year has seen a proliferation of lawsuits alleging that food product labels mislead consumers about the product’s ingredients. The trend continued last month, with decisions from the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and one of its district courts reaching different results on motions to dismiss complaints alleging deceptive food labels. Last month, the First Circuit reinstated a class action lawsuit against New England Coffee for violation…

We have previously written about decisions addressing food product labels, and the messages that these labels convey about the products’ ingredients. In Jessani v. Monini, the Second Circuit found that a product label for “white truffle flavored” olive oil did not imply that the product contained actual white truffles. Not long afterwards, the Second Circuit ruled in Mantikas v. Kellogg that the claim “made with whole grain” could be misleading with respect to crackers…

A magistrate judge in the Northern District of California recently dismissed a putative class action alleging that Trader Joe’s misled its consumers about the purity of its manuka honey.  Moore v. Trader Joe’s Co., No. 4:18-CV-04418-KAW, 2019 WL 2579219 (N.D. Cal. June 24, 2019). Plaintiffs commenced a putative class action lawsuit alleging that Trader Joe’s engaged in “false, misleading, and deceptive marketing” by representing that its Trader Joe’s Manuka Honey product was “entirely”…