Injunctive Relief Class Certified in Twinings Tea “Antioxidants” Suit
A federal court in California has certified a statewide class of those who purchased Twinings North America’s green, black and white tea products labeled as a “Natural Source of Antioxidants.” Lanovaz v. Twinings N. Am., Inc., No. 12-2646 (N.D. Cal., order entered April 24, 2014). Details about a previous ruling narrowing the claims appear in Issue 509 of this Update.
So ruling, the court rejected the defendant’s argument that the proposed class lacked ascertainability “because few, if any, company records exist to identify purchasers or which products they bought, and consumers did not keep receipts or product containers.” According to the court, many classes similar to this one had been certified by courts in the Ninth Circuit to the extent that the “class definition describes a set of common characteristics sufficient to allow a prospective plaintiff to identify himself or herself as having a right to recover based on the description.” The court also found the plaintiff’s claims typical of the class, even though she had purchased just six of the 51 products at issue. In the court’s view, all of the products here have the “natural source of antioxidants” label statements and are made from the same type of tea plant.
The certification order is limited to injunctive relief under Rule 23(b)(2), in part, because the plaintiff was unable to present “a legally relevant damages model under Rule 23(b)(3).” Her expert, Dr. Oral Capps, had proposed three models: refunding the entire purchase or “register” price of the tea, which the court found was not a proper measure of damages; comparing the price of the product under a “benefit of the bargain” rule or price-premium model, which the court rejected because the expert “has no way of linking the price difference, if any, to the antioxidant label or controlling for other reasons why ‘comparable’ products may have different prices”; and applying an “economic or regression analysis,” which the court found could be legally relevant, but had been abandoned after the expert found that the antioxidants statement had been on the product packages during the entire class period. “Hence,” the expert opined, “it is not possible in this case to invoke a regression analysis because of the lack of any variable in sales or units sold attributed to the antioxidant claims.”
Issue 521
