CHICAGO (Legal Newsline) – Dog owners who want to sue Mars Petcare over a line of its limited ingredient foods can only do so over products they actually bought, a Chicago federal judge has ruled.
Judge Manish Shah wrote on July 12 that John Bakopoulos and other plaintiffs can’t pursue class action claims over dog food they never bought, granting Mars’ motion to dismiss them while allowing others to proceed.
The class action concerns Nutro Limited Ingredient Diets, which allegedly were advertised as not containing chicken, wheat or soy even though they do.
Those ingredients can cause allergic reactions in pets, say the plaintiffs, who allege they paid a premium for the food to avoid them. The six plaintiffs named six products, two of which they did not purchase. They are Duck & Lentils Recipe Grain Free and Small Bites Adult Lamb and Sweet Potato Recipe.
A promise that a plaintiff would buy those products in the future if they conformed to their packaging was not enough to establish injury.
“Because plaintiffs allege only conjectural future injuries, and not imminent ones, they lack standing to seek prospective injunctive relief,” Shah wrote.
“Bakopoulos is aware of the true nature of Mars’s products and their marketing (as shown by the complaint) and he is therefore unlikely to be harmed by the defendant’s practices in the future.”
Claims from other plaintiffs were similarly thrown out because the purchases did not occur in Illinois.
Claims made under the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act and for breach of warranty survived.
“Absent clearer guidance from the Illinois Supreme Court, I read the prohibition on overlapping contract and consumer-fraud claims to not apply to misrepresentations in the kind of product marketing at issue here,” Shah wrote.