Tuesday, October 01, 2013

Newton law: puree is real fruit

Manchouck v. Mondelēz International Inc., No. C 13–02148, 2013 WL 5400285 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 26, 2013)

This one’s short: Manchouck argued that Nabisco’s strawberry and raspberry Newton cookies were not “made with real fruit,” as labeled, but merely with “mechanically processed fruit purée.”  This didn’t pass Iqbal’s plausibility requirement; Manchouck didn’t explain why “made with real fruit” would not include mechanically separated fruit purée.  Even the most narrow definition of “real fruit” didn’t exclude strained/puréed fruit.  Also, the package prominently displayed a picture of the cookies and their puréed fruit filling, and the ingredient list confirmed the presence of purée. “It is ridiculous to say that consumers would expect snack food ‘made with real fruit’ to contain only ‘actual strawberries or raspberries,’ rather than these fruits in a form amenable to being squeezed inside a Newton.”  Williams v. Gerber Products Co., 552 F.3d 934 (9th Cir. 2008), was not to the contrary, because there the packaging depicted fruits not actually found in the product.

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