Plaintiff in Bigelow Class Action Cannot Obtain Profit Information

A California federal court has denied a plaintiff’s attempt to obtain Bigelow’s financial records in a putative class action alleging that the company mislabeled its tea. Khasin v. R.C. Bigelow Inc., No. 12-2204 (N.D. Cal., order entered August 12, 2015). The plaintiff argued that the records would help him calculate what portion of the profits he would seek. The court sided with Bigelow, which argued that “its profits and costs are irrelevant because the proper measure of restitution in a food labeling case is the price premium attributable to the challenged label (the difference between the product as labeled and the product as received), not its profits.” The court then cited a similar decision in another food labeling lawsuit with the same plaintiff.

Issue 575