Duane Morris Class Action Review - 2023 - Report - Page 285
B.
Rulings On Class Claims At The Pleadings Stage
Courts generally do not strike or dismiss class action allegations at the pleading stage.
A more successful strategy is often to secure a dismissal of a class action at the
pleading stage by attacking plaintiffs’ core legal theories that do not require factual
support. For example, in the consumer fraud context, in certain states, courts can
examine whether or not reasonable consumers would believe and rely on the label’s
statements to form core beliefs about the product. This type of inquiry can result in a
dismissal at the pleading stage. It is also necessary to examine any statutory claims
asserted by plaintiffs. If the statutory claims are based on, for example, consumer
protection laws from various states that form the basis of nationwide class, there are
sometimes significant enough variations in those laws to at least get a more-narrow
definition of a nationwide class, or even have certain state’s classes stricken altogether.
Absent a legal determination, courts will allow class complaints to proceed beyond the
pleading stage into fact (and expert) discovery. There are however occasions when
courts will dispose of claims at the pleading stage.
In Akers, et al. v. Costco Wholesale Corp., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 177837 (S.D. Ill. Sept.
29, 2022), for example, the court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss a consumer
class action claim based upon mislabeling. In Akers, the plaintiff filed a class action
alleging that defendant’s black raspberry sparkling water label misled consumers about
how the beverage was flavored in violation of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and
Deceptive Business Practice Act. In opposition to the motion to dismiss, the plaintiff
asserted that the statement of “black raspberry flavor,” including pictures of black
raspberries and the red color of the beverage, made the omission of the “artificially
flavored” misleading. The plaintiff claimed that the black raspberry flavor sparkling water
product did not contain the reasonably expected natural ingredients, resulting in plaintiff
paying more than the product’s value. Id. at *3. Defendant argued that no reasonable
consumer would interpret the phrase “black raspberry flavor,” as displayed on the label,
to make any specific ingredient claim. Id. at *7. The court reasoned that the label did not
make any claim that the product was flavored with black raspberries, much less only
black raspberries, nor did the product claim that black raspberry was anything more
than the flavor and granted defendant’s motion to dismiss.
In Re ZF-TRW Airbag Control Units Products Liability Litigation, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS
32593 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 9, 2022), involved several car manufacturing defendants and
their allegedly defective airbag control units that failed to deploy during a collision. The
plaintiffs’ complaint contained class allegations, including state specific sub-classes,
and asserted causes of action under various states’ consumer protection laws, as well
as fraud and breach of warranty theories under various states’ laws. Defendants, which
included car manufacturers and electronics manufacturers, all filed separate motions to
dismiss arguing lack of pleading specificity, and also advanced jurisdictional arguments.
Id. at *2-5.
Although the court declined to issue a ruling on whether or not it has personal
jurisdiction over the nationwide class claims on prematurity grounds, the court granted
motions to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction over some defendants and some
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Duane Morris Class Action Review – 2023
