San Jose Mercury News. (h/t: How Appealing) Excerpts:
The [San Francisco] Bay Area has always been considered food heaven. And now it is home to the nation's Food Court.
Dozens of class-action lawsuits have piled up on the plates of Northern California's federal judges targeting the food industry for misleading the public in labeling on everything from yogurt to potato chips -- fueled by hungry lawyers and consumers with heartburn from browsing the grocery aisles.
The lawsuits, not surprisingly, have given the $900 billion-a-year food industry indigestion. Companies ranging from Procter & Gamble to Ben & Jerry's to ConAgra have joined forces and assembled a legal team to fight lawsuits they say are "hypertechnical" assertions cooked up by plaintiffs' lawyers looking to cash in.
Indeed, the lawsuits are cookie-cutter complaints, identical in form except for the specifics of the products involved. They do not claim any health injury, but instead argue that many consumers would not buy those Doritos or Ocean Spray juices if they weren't deceived.
"Pour in the complaint and out comes a complaint," said William Stern, a San Francisco lawyer who is helping lead the industry's courtroom defense. "They all sound the same. And some of these are just laughable."
Thus far, however, the Bay Area's federal judges have not laughed them out of court, rejecting the industry's efforts to get the suits dismissed at early stages. At the same time, the judges clearly are struggling to determine whether there truly is any substance to the labeling claims and who might be in the right.
"Both parties appear to agree this case is a David-vs.-Goliath battle," San Jose U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal wrote in one recent case against Nestlé. "Where they disagree is which party is the Goliath and which is the David."