SAN DIEGO (Legal Newsline) - Class action lawyers have scored a win in their lawsuit over One a Day fruit bites, as a San Diego federal judge has turned down Bayer's motion to dismiss the case.
Judge Michael Anello on Feb. 28 ruled for lawyers at Reese LLP in Edison Corpuz's lawsuit, which alleges Bayer markets the gummies as all natural despite the presence of synthetic ingredients.
Citing precedent from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Anello rejected Bayer's claims that all curious consumers need to do is read the ingredients list. Anello said that can't be a "shield for liability" in deceptive advertising cases.
"Here, the Ninth Circuit's general prohibition on using an ingredient list to correct a misleading claim applies because Plaintiff sufficiently alleges that the products' labels are deceptive rather than 'ambiguous,'" Anello wrote.
"Therefore, although it is certainly possible that looking to the ingredient list on the back of a multivitamin bottle sufficiently explains (or disclaims) the word 'natural' to a reasonable consumer, this is an issue that should be ultimately decided by the factfinder. The mere presence of such additional information is not enough to dismiss Plaintiff's claims as a matter of law."
The case makes the argument some of the ingredients are synthetic, like cholecalciferol, niacinamide, pyridoxine hydrochloride and D-biotin, among others.
"Consumers would not know the true nature of the ingredients merely by reading the ingredients label. This is because the ingredient list does not disclose the manufacturing process for each ingredient," the suit says.
"Discovering that the ingredients are not natural and are actually synthetic requires a scientific investigation and knowledge of chemistry beyond that the everyday knowledge of the average consumer."
The suit claims violation of the California Consumers Legal Remedies Act.