WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (Legal Newsline) – A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit that alleged consumers were misled by Coca-Cola’s line of tea products that proclaimed themselves “slightly sweet.”
Plaintiff Amanda Mazella last year filed a class action that claimed there was too much sugar in Gold Peak brand tea for that phrase to apply. Her lawyers argued “slightly sweet” was a claim of low sugar, but the teas at issue contained more than .5 grams.
Judge Nelson Roman ruled July 12 that “slightly sweet” is not a false or misleading factual promise and didn’t violated Food and Drug Administration regulations.
“Plaintiff has not plausibly alleged that ‘Slightly Sweet’ on the Product label would cause a reasonable consumer to assume that it is ‘low sugar’ and thus ‘low calories,” Roman wrote.
“According to Plaintiff, the Product label would lead a reasonable consumer to take ‘Slightly Sweet’ as a factual representation of the amount of sugar in the Product and therefore assume that the Product has a low amount of sugar.
“However, the Court finds that, on its face, the term ‘Slightly Sweet’ is analogous to ‘Just a Tad Sweet’ which the court in Salazar v. Honest Tea, Inc. remarked was a ‘blatant form [] of puffery.’”
The ruling should have an impact on similar lawsuits, like a San Francisco class action against a Snapple tea that is marketed as “sorta sweet.”
The lawyer pushing the Gold Peak case is Spencer Sheehan of New York. He’s joined by the firm Reese LLP for the Snapple case, in which the defendant’s motion to dismiss is pending.
“’Sorta Sweet’ is part of a food label, which has both a Nutrition Facts panel and an Ingredients List,” the motion says.
“Those portions of the label accurately disclose the sugar content and ingredients, which include real sugar. No reasonable consumer goes through the mental gymnastics of redefining the puffery of ‘Sorta Sweet’ to mean ‘low in sugar’ while simultaneously ignoring the portions of the label that undo that implausible interpretation.”
Judge Roman, in the Gold Peak case, noted that the presence of a nutrition facts panel can defeat a claim of deception.
“Because the Product discloses the number of calories and amount of sugar on the label, a reasonable consumer would not assume the definition of ‘Slightly Sweet’ is ‘low sugar’ or ‘low calories.’”