DALE GIALI: Courts have roundly rejected cases that don’t involve deception or injury
Next we caught up with Dale J. Giali, partner at Mayer Brown.
There are more than a few lumps of coal for consumer class action attorneys this year. Courts have roundly rejected their efforts to proceed on food labeling cases that don’t have deception or injury.
Decision after decision make clear what food companies have argued all along – alleged technical violations of the FDCA are not synonymous with deception, food companies cannot be held strictly liable to consumers for misbranding, consumers are not damaged (i.e., subject to arrest) for holding misbranded food, and if consumers are somehow able to allege and show they materially relied on a deceptive label they are entitled (at most) to the incremental price premium (if any) associated with the specific deceptive statement (and certainly not a full refund of the purchase price).
