SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) – A class action lawsuit that S.C. Johnson & Son misled customers when it said its ecover cleaning products are made “with plant-based ingredients” fails to identify a single lie, the company argues.
S.C. Johnson filed a motion to dismiss March 3 in San Francisco federal court against the class action being pursued by the Clarkson Law Firm of Los Angeles and Moon Law in Palo Alto. In a January complaint, those firms targeted the ecover line – which includes laundry detergent, dishwasher tablets and toilet cleaner.
The suit claimed ingredients like coconut and palm oil are subjected to “substantial chemical modification and processing” that creates an entirely new, synthetically created ingredient.”
“(T)o try to frame a claim, Plaintiff’s Complaint is a study in tortured definition interpretation and supposition,” the motion to dismiss says.
“She asserts the ‘plant-based Ingredients’ and ‘plant-based and mineral ingredients’ labels indicate that products (1) only contain plant-based and/or mineral ingredients that have not been chemically modified or processed; (2) only contain natural ingredients; and (3) do not contain synthetic, non-natural, or highly processed ingredients.
“That leap is unsupported by any statements on the Ecover product labels that support her tortured view that ‘plant-based ingredients’ has such an expansive meaning. Nor does she plausibly allege facts that would support the conclusion that reasonable consumers interpret the ‘plant-based ingredients’ and ‘plant-based and mineral ingredients’ labels to mean any of those things.”
The motion criticizes named plaintiff Elizabeth Maisel’s effort to lead a class action over several ecover products when she only bought one – dishwasher tablets. The products aren’t so similar that she should be allowed to do that, it says.
“None of the complained of ingredients are found in all the products,” the motion says. “And ecover dishwasher tablets only share 1-% of the ingredients Plaintiff identifies with some of the other products.”
Also, a nationwide class would be inappropriate in the California court because it does not have jurisdiction over potential members, the motion says. S.C. Johnson is headquartered in Wisconsin.