LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) – Class action lawyers attempting to link slave labor in the harvesting of cocoa to Starbucks’ marketing have gained a court victory that will let their case move forward.
On May 5, Los Angeles federal judge John Holcomb threw out two parts of a lawsuit that was filed by Schonbrun Seplow, which is claiming companies that use cocoa harvested in West Africa by means of child and slave labor are faking their interest in buying cocoa that is ethically sourced.
The firm went as far as digging up old, now-deleted versions of webpages using software called Wayback Machine to argue Starbucks made representations its goal was to purchase cocoa that was not the product of child or slave labor.
And while Judge Holcomb wasn’t buying the theories made against Mars Wrigley and Quaker Oats, he did rule that plaintiff Lori Myers has sufficiently stated claims against Starbucks.
The challenged statement is that Starbucks labels its hot chocolate as “made with ethically sourced cocoa.” Her first complaint claimed Starbucks’ COCOA verification program was “a sham,” but the court rejected that.
“Rather than dig up additional facts about the COCOA program or Starbucks’ environmental impact, Myers has retooled her argument: because ‘no company, including Starbucks,’ can claim slave-free chocolate, a reasonable consumer would be misled by chocolate advertised as ‘ethically sourced.’”
Plaintiffs lawyers say about 2 million children are forced to labor on cocoa farms in West Africa and that they harvest most of the cocoa that Americans consume.
Cocoa production in West Africa also drives deforestation there, they say, which all contradict claims cocoa is “ethically sourced.”
“Myers has alleged sufficient facts to clear this hurdle at the Rule 12(b)(6) state,” Holcomb wrote.
“Myers has alleged that child slavery is endemic to the chocolate trade; that it is difficult or impossible to product chocolate without labor from child slaves; that a reasonable consumer is sensitive to these concerns and would consider ethically made chocolate and reliance on child slavery mutually exclusive; and that Starbucks claims that its hot chocolate is made from ethically sourced cocoa.”
Next, lawyers will move for Holcomb to certify a class of nationwide consumers misled by Starbucks’ claims. If he does so, the litigation will surely get very expensive for the company.
Two co-defendants, though, appear to have gotten out early, unless an appeal changes things.
Mars Wrigley puts a statement on its Dove products that its cocoa is “traceable from farms into our factory.” The lawsuit claims Mars can only trace 24% of its cocoa, which is then intermingled with cocoa that can’t be traced.
Intermingling means Mars abandons its tracing or separation of the cocoa, Myers’ lawyers argued, leaving no meaningful different between products labeled as traceable and those that aren’t.
“Unfortunately for Myers, Mars’ statement is carefully worded,” Holcomb wrote. “Mars claims that it buys beans ‘traceable from the farms into our factories’ – not that it buys only traceable beans.
“Mars’ claim is technically true: Mars does buy traceable beans. It is just that Mars may also buy nontraceable beans – a fact that Mars, understandably, declines to advertise. But Mars has not affirmatively misrepresented its purchases.”
As for Quaker Oats, it says its chocolate chip chewy bars support “sustainably sourced cocoa through Cocoa Horizons.”
After a first ruling that Quaker Oats does partner with that group, Myers’ lawyers said the label is misleading because Cocoa Horizons hasn’t achieved meaningful results.
“The Second Amended Complaint makes no allegations that Quaker Oats anywhere promises certain results,” he ruled.