WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - The U.S. Supreme Court won't reignite coffee-causes-cancer lawsuits in California, declining to hear an appeal on April 17.
The decision leaves in place a California federal judge's injunction against such cases, which allege food products containing acrylamide need one of California's notorious Prop 65 warnings that they could cause cancer.
A group called Council for Education and Research and Toxics, which operates out of the offices of plaintiff attorney Raphael Metzger, had initial success squeezing settlements out of companies that sold coffee but has since found courts unreceptive.
Acrylamide is a naturally occurring compound that appears in roasted foods like coffee. While California regulators consider acrylamide to be a potential carcinogen based on animal studies, the National Cancer Institute and the Food and Drug Administration say there’s no solid evidence acrylamide in foods causes cancer.
A 2019 regulation stating it would be unnecessary to include the Prop 65 warning severely hampered CERT's effort to push litigation. In the case recently declined by the U.S. Supreme Court, plaintiff California Chamber of Commerce sought an injunction against CERT's lawsuits.
Judge Kim Mueller granted it, only to face an attack from CERT that said she should have recused herself. She did so, but the Ninth Circuit and SCOTUS have now left her injunction in place.
The Ninth Circuit agreed with Judge Mueller that the science surrounding acrylamide was subject to “robust disagreement by reputable scientific sources” and the companies stood a good chance of winning their First Amendment arguments.
Smaller businesses in particular often can’t afford the cost of proving that acrylamide levels in their products are safe, the appeals court said, and might be forced to issue a warning they believe to be false in order to avoid ruinous litigation.
The appeals court agreed that CERT had standing to challenge the injunction but rejected the group’s argument it violated its First Amendment rights. Courts have ruled that the First Amendment protects the filing of lawsuits, the appeals court said, but in this case those lawsuits would be “illegal” under the judge’s injunction order and therefore not subject to constitutional protection.