WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Legal Newsline) – One of the lawsuits alleging Folgers lies about how many cups of coffee are in a can is “demonstrably wrong,” attorneys for the company are claiming.
Lawyers at Winston & Strawn filed their motion to dismiss the amended class action complaint of Marcia Sorin on Nov. 6 in Florida federal court. They say the addition of “expert” findings in the amended complaint does not give the plaintiff any stronger footing.
Like other cases filed around the country, Sorin’s says Folgers and parent company J.M. Smucker misrepresent how many cups of coffees can be made.
When the packaging makes claims like “MAKES UP TO 240 6 FL OZ CUPS,” it is lying, the lawsuit claims. It goes through the math of one tablespoon for one serving equating to 1,200 grams of ground coffee needed to make 240 servings.
But the net weight of that particular size can is 865 grams, the suit says.
“The result of this is that Florida consumers overpay, as they do not receive the amount of coffee servings Folgers represents to be present in the container, to the detriment of the consumer,” the suit says.
The amended complaint introduced the opinion of an “expert” who measured the coffee grounds in each product to calculate how many tablespoons are in the cans.
“But if the court looks at the canisters in the (First Amended Complaint), as it can and should, it will see that nothing on the canisters states that they contain a certain number of tablespoons of coffee, as Plaintiff claims,” Folgers’ lawyers wrote.
“The only thing Folgers actually represents on the canister is noticeably absent in the FAC – and that is that the ‘canister makes up to 380 suggested strength 6 fl oz servings,’
“Nowhere in the FAC is there any allegation that the Folgers’ canisters are incapable of making up to the number of suggested strength servings, as Folgers represents.”