Boyd v. Target Corp.
- Katherine Menendez
- 0:23-cv-02668
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 9
In Boyd v. Target Corp., Judge Menendez denied Target’s request for interlocutory appeal and denied as moot its emergency stay motion.
Target Corp., the 14 named plaintiffs, and the proposed nationwide class are affected. The case was not paused by this order, and the litigation could continue into discovery.
What happened
In Boyd v. Target Corp., 14 named plaintiffs allege that Target’s “Target Clean” labels mislead consumers about beauty products. The court had previously refused to dismiss the case.
Target asked to appeal that earlier decision before the case ended and to pause the litigation. Target argued that the court had improperly applied the reasonable-consumer test to its labeling program.
Judge Menendez denied the appeal request because the earlier decision applied the ordinary failure-to-state-a-claim standard and did not involve the kind of purely legal question eligible for immediate appeal. She denied the emergency stay motion as moot.
The detailed version
- Boyd v. Target Corp. · No. 0:23-cv-02668
- Katherine Menendez
- Jan. 30, 2025
Background
Fourteen named plaintiffs brought a consumer-fraud action against Target Corp. on behalf of a proposed nationwide class. They allege that Target’s “Target Clean” program makes representations about beauty products, including that certain products are free from commonly unwanted chemicals or ingredients and are formulated without ingredients consumers may not want. According to the complaint, those representations are false or misleading.
The court had previously denied Target’s motion to dismiss and motion to strike. In this order, Target asked the court to certify that earlier order for an immediate, nonfinal appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b). Target also filed an emergency motion to stay, or pause, the litigation while the court considered the appeal request and, if an appeal were allowed, during any later appeal. The parties had begun the initial stages of discovery.
Interlocutory Appeal Request
A denial of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim ordinarily is not a final appealable order. Section 1292(b) allows a district court to certify an otherwise nonfinal order for interlocutory appeal only when three conditions are met: the order involves a controlling question of law, there is substantial ground for disagreement about that question, and an immediate appeal could materially advance the end of the litigation.
Target described the issue as whether the reasonable-consumer test should apply differently to a retailer’s labeling of multiple products under a company-specific program than to representations by a manufacturer about one product. The court rejected that framing. It said its earlier order did not change or apply the reasonable-consumer test differently. Instead, the court applied the Rule 12(b)(6) standard, which asks whether the complaint contains enough specific facts to state a claim that is plausible on its face, while assuming the complaint’s factual allegations are true and drawing reasonable inferences for the plaintiffs.
The court explained that the reasonable-consumer test informed its plausibility analysis but did not replace the usual Rule 12(b)(6) inquiry. The court found that the plaintiffs plausibly alleged that a reasonable consumer could be misled by the Target Clean representations. It emphasized the allegations that Target Clean was a programmatic claim applied to hundreds of products, that Target used its goodwill and authority to distinguish certain products, and that consumers could understand the program as reducing the need to examine individual product labels.
The court stated that Target’s disagreement with how the court applied the law to the complaint’s alleged facts did not present the purely legal question required for interlocutory certification. Because Target failed to satisfy the first required criterion, the court did not decide whether Target met the other two criteria.
Disposition
The court denied Target’s Motion to Certify Order for Interlocutory Appeal. It denied Target’s Emergency Motion to Stay as moot. The order therefore left the litigation moving forward, and the opinion noted that the parties had already proceeded into the initial stages of discovery. Judge Katherine M. Menendez signed the order.
Read the full 9-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.