SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) - The maker of English muffins at the center of a class action lawsuit says plaintiffs lawyers shouldn't be allowed to proceed with the case.
Food for Life Baking filed a motion to dismiss the suit on Nov. 21 in California federal court, arguing the plaintiffs only dissolved a stay of the case because it was assigned to a judge who might be more favorable to their claims than the judge who previously presided over it.
The case concerns the protein level of FFL's English muffins. Though the disclosed protein content on the package is accurate, the plaintiffs say FFL fails to account for the digestibility of the protein.
Similar cases in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California will be affected by Judge Richard Seeborg's decision to dismiss a lawsuit against Kind. Plaintiff lawyers have appealed his ruling, and the case against FFL was stayed pending resolution.
But the FFL case was transferred from Seeborg to Judge Trina Thompson.
"(I)mmediately after this case was transferred to this Court, Plaintiffs' counsel withdrew from the stay hoping that this Court would disagree with Judge Seeborg," FFL's lawyers say.
They also say the claims are preempted by the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and that plaintiffs can prove they relied on the protein information to make their purchases.
According to the complaint, Food For Life Baking labels some of its food products as providing specific amounts of protein per serving depending on the product, such as “7g plant-based protein per serving.”
Plaintiffs Molly Brown and Adina Ringler claim that this cannot be true because the FDA recognizes that not all proteins are the same in their ability to meet human nutritional requirements.
The products do not meet the FDA's required method for measuring protein quality and its digestibility, the Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score, the suit says.
A .5 PDCAAS means only half the protein in a product is available to support human protein needs so if said product contained 10 grams total protein per serving, the corrected amount of protein would be 5 grams per serving, the suit says.
Brown and Ringler state the defendant’s protein claim is in the form of a quantitative amount appearing alone, without any information about protein quality, makes it false. A claim of 7g protein per serving would only be 3.5g of protein usable by the human body, the suit claims.
Brown and Ringler are represented by Seth Safier of Gutride Safier LLP.