SAN DIEGO (Legal Newsline) – Be more specific, a federal judge is demanding of class action lawyers who claim Nestle made misleading statements about the origin of the cocoa it uses.
San Diego judge James Lorenz on March 30 granted Nestle’s motion to dismiss the case but allowed lawyers representing plaintiff Renee Walker to amend. She is represented by Coast Law Group, Schonbrun Seplow and Reese LLP.
When those lawyers included pictures of Nestle products with the allegedly misleading statements, they never said which, if any, were actually purchased by their client.
“She does not allege that she purchased any of the products shown in the photographs,” Lorenz wrote. “Without this information it is impossible to infer what was stated on the labels of the products she purchased, and how the statements were presented on the labels.
“Plaintiff’s allegations are too general to identify the transaction at issue, a fortiori, they are insufficient to meet the heightened pleading standard under Rule 9(b).”
In July, Nestle filed its motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which claims labels about humane harvesting of cocoa in West Africa are untrue. The case is one of many using California consumer protection laws to punish companies that buy cocoa from West Africa, where some cocoa plantations use child and slave labor.
The case against Nestle claims Walker bought its products based on labels that stated Nestle “supports farmers for better chocolate” and that the company was working to “help improve the lives of cocoa farmers.”
The company attempted to use a free speech law to fight Walker’s case, but Lorenz ruled the Anti-SLAPP Law did not apply.
That law is used by defendants who claim the subjects of lawsuits are actually protected free speech.
Nestle pointed to the Nestle Cocoa Plan website, claiming its statements on its website about combating child and slave labor brought the case into the scope of the Anti-SLAPP Law because they concern an issue of public interest.
Nestle included the web address on its packaging. The argument failed, Judge James Lorenz wrote.
“Defendant’s product labels are not about environmental sustainability and labor conditions in general,” Lorenz wrote. “They refer to Defendant’s environmental and labor-related business operations specifically.
“Accordingly, in context, the reference to the website does not negate the purely commercial statements on the product labels.”