This strikes me as... not being in good faith.
"I thought Pop Tarts would prevent cancer" is silly.
This is especially obvious when you consider their other flavors. Imagine the alternative HN title "Law Firm Sues Kellogg for Not Enough S'Mores in S'Mores Pop-Tarts".
This is only because you have become accustomed to industrial food production practices. Because you've been tricked early in life and learned that 'strawberry' doesn't mean the berry and you've just normalized this practice.
If you ever do any cooking of your own you'll know that things like Strawberry Jam is made from taking a pot of strawberries and adding other ingredients. It very clearly is not taking 1 strawberry and adding a pot of strawberry like flavorings.
The real issue is we have crappy consumer protection laws. Companies should be forced to provide truthful advertising practices. E.g. 'Simulated Strawberry Flavor Poptarts' (don't hide the simulated label in tiny print that nobody notices until after the purchase). Another major problem is downsizing packaging, e.g. Orange Juice in a standard size container that is filled only to 90% capacity.
I could probably grab a box of pop tarts of whatever flavor I have in my pantry and check the ingredients list, but I'm pretty sure that it won't be misleading to any reasonable person.
And yes by analogy if I buy 'ground beef' I know it will be 100% ground beef because we have laws ensuring that is the case. However if I buy Shepards Pie & the packaging in large, bold text informs me that it is made with beef, I have to spend 60 seconds checking the packaging for small print that tells me the beef is actually 98% soy and 2% beef then I feel that's misleading.
As a consumer I don't know why one is protected while the other isn't, but I've learned through buying really bad products that I need to spend 60 seconds checking the packaging because some companies are fine hiding the truth.
So really the suit is about truth in advertising and exposing that we have a very low bar to be honest in consumer products.
I totally agree that "made with X!" adverts when X is actually 1% of the final product are misleading and should be illegal (maybe they are already, and it's just not enforced well?) - but I do think there's a difference between describing flavor and ingredients, and poptarts are pretty obviously the former.
How could a competitor benefit from using an honest quantity of real strawberries, if the only place they can effectively advertise that is in the tiny ingredients list that nobody reads?
"Filling made from 100% real strawberries!"
Already a common marketing construction, even. Apple juice is often sold with this bit of puffery.
Food labelling laws need an overhaul. And some serious teeth.
That statement says the strawberries are 100% real, it does nothing to exclude the addition of other ingredients or artificial red flavoring added elsewhere.
You may think I'm being asinine, but I'm not. I've been fooled by that language before.
"To me" being a native English speaker who has grown up in a culture where "strawberry" means a strawberry hasn't ever been within ten miles of that box of pop tarts? I mean, is that how far we've come? Just assume that what's literally printed on the box is a scam?
The frequency with which things without significant amounts of X but with some X-based or simulating flavor are labelled “X-flavored Y” rather than “X Y” suggests that it is not at all obvious or standard usage that the latter means the same as the former.
OTOH, mandatory food labelling laws are spotty on where they concretely prohibit the latter labelling.
On the gripping hand, the effect od the aggregate of those laws is important in shaping the context in which the package at issue is read.
It would be more akin to them advertising specific ingredients in S’Mores but the food stuffs not resembling S’mores in any form. It’s not as good an example as advertising strawberry but selling a predominately apple/pear artificially coloring it like strawberry. What’s the purpose of all this bait and switch? Allegedly so they can charge more than for apple/pear pop tarts.
This strikes me as... not being in good faith.
Clearly you didn’t read the Complaint, only this article which is written on behalf of the food industry and an obvious attempt to publicly attack both a singled out woman that is part of a class of plaintiffs and the law firm representing the plaintiff. It’s the same reason to this day people talk negatively about a woman suing McDonald’s and winning $1M after being burned by hot coffee, because McDonald’s sought to mock her claims publicly and it is a successful tactic. It’s hardly ever mentioned the McDonald’s in question purposely served coffee significantly hotter than industry standards permit, failed to attach the lid to her coffee resulting in 3rd degree burns to her crotch area requiring skin graphs, and was only required to pay he a single days worth of coffee sales.
Just look at the bs title of the article, “law firm sues…”. Then the very first sentence charges the law firm with being a “litigious law firm.”
What a joke, a law firm isn’t suing Kellogg, a law firm represents plaintiffs in a class action law suit (which is rare because it requires overcoming a legal burden of certifying the class). It’s this class of plaintiffs suing Kellogg not a “litigious law firm.”
The lawsuit, in addition to damages, is seeking the product be properly labeled. While the truth about Kellogg selling shit products to consumers may be obvious to you (and will ironically be one of their defenses), Kellogg’s labels are allegedly below the industry standard of competing toaster pastries that make disclosures of the artificial fillers. So it’s maybe not so ridiculous this woman and class of plaintiffs thought a strawberry pop tart might include the health benefits of…strawberries. After all if they didn’t then pop tart could have easily labeled their product the same way as all the other strawberry toaster pastries. It’s a far cry away from trying to paint a single plaintiff of a class action lawsuit as a wacko that thinks pop tarts prevents cancer, but hey it’s why these anti-plaintiff articles are written by industry, corporations advertise and mislabel products to begin with…it works on people.
The claimed harm in this case is they wouldn't have paid $4 for Pop Tarts if they'd realized they were less healthy.
(Yes, I read the complaint.)
If you actually read the complaint then you wouldn’t try comparing the damages resulting from a negligence case and this case for:
1. Violation of the NY consumer statue act;
2. Negligent misrepresentation;
3. Breach of implied merchantability; and
4. Unjust enrichment.
Also please cite from the complaint exactly where you got you initial quotation that the plaintiffs “thought pop tarts would prevent cancer.” Or why you would have made that up after reading the complaint?
The article talks about proper labeling and marketing, which is all well and good, but then, isn't that the jurisdiction of the FDA?
This seems like a waste of time, but I guess if you file 2-3 $5MM lawsuits per week, you're bound to eventually win one of them. It just shows ways to exploit this legal system, I suppose.
Now that's just marketing I know but at some point it's a lie. How many strawberries? How close to the poptart do you have to wave them?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2013/03/05/p...
I keep hoping that somebody will push back on this sort of lawsuit, by asking the court to appoint a trustee or conservator to manage the life of the plaintiff - because clearly they are not capable of understanding the Real World(tm) well enough to do that themselves.