OAKLAND, Calif. (Legal Newsline) – California class action lawyers are using a recent federal decision in their favor to attempt to boost their other cases.
The Clarkson Law Firm of Los Angeles and Moon Law of Palo Alto on May 12 pointed Oakland federal judge Jeffrey White at a colleague’s decision a week earlier that allowed a lawsuit against S.C. Johnson & Son to move forward.
That May 5 ruling said a reasonable consumer could have been misled by S.C. Johnson’s Ecover cleaning products, which are marketed as having plant-based ingredients. The lawsuit says consumers are misled into thinking they only contain healthy ingredients despite the presence of synthetic materials.
Magistrate judge Thomas Hixson denied all seven of S.C. Johnson’s arguments for dismissal, which included the fact that the synthetic ingredients’ presence is disclosed on the back on an ingredients list.
But reasonable consumers aren’t expected to read such a list, Hixson wrote.
The lawyers filed that decision in their case against GlaxoSmithKline that says 100% natural ChapStick products aren’t.
They say claims of “100% Natural” and “100% Naturally Sourced Ingredients” are misleading buyers of products like Natural Lip Butter, Natural Lip Balm, Essential Oils Lip Balm and Hydration Moisture + Tint Lip Balm.
The complaint says there are 12 ingredients in the products not considered “natural,” like citric acid and hydrogenated soybean oil.
Judge White is currently deciding the defendants’ motion to dismiss that case. They say plaintiff Lisa Moore can’t sue over an entire line of products when she only bought three of them.
But Hixson rejected that line of thinking in the Ecover case, saying the claims made on all products are similar enough that the plaintiff didn’t need to purchase all of them to have standing.