SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) – Keurig Dr Pepper has hit back against a lawsuit that says claims that its Snapple Straight Up Tea is “sorta sweet” tricks consumers into drinking a product with more sugar than they’d think.
In addition to the fact that the sugar content is on the label, no reasonable consumer could believe “sorta sweet” to mean “low in sugar,” a Jan. 14 motion to dismiss says. The plaintiffs lawyers pursuing the class action are the inventive attorneys at Reese LLP in California and Spencer Sheehan of New York.
“’Sorta Sweet’ is part of a food label, which has both a Nutrition Facts panel and an Ingredients List,” the motion says.
“Those portions of the label accurately disclose the sugar content and ingredients, which include real sugar. No reasonable consumer goes through the mental gymnastics of redefining the puffery of ‘Sorta Sweet’ to mean ‘low in sugar’ while simultaneously ignoring the portions of the label that undo that implausible interpretation.”
Lawyers for Keurig Dr Pepper say the word “sweet” does not necessarily refer to sugar content and “sorta” does not mean low in quality.
They also note two other versions of the tea, one marketed as unsweetened and one as sweet. Sorta Sweet has roughly half the sugar content of sweet, and unsweetened has zero grams.
“Here, ‘Sorta Sweet’ constitutes puffery because it is an ‘inherently vague and generalized’ description of the tea’s taste,” the motion says.
“There is no objective standard by which Plaintiff can prove whether ‘Sorta Sweet’ tea is, or is not, ‘Sorta Sweet,’ given that there is no objective meaning to ‘sorta’ and consumers perceptions of sweetness is inherently variable.”