Venticinque v. Back to Nature Foods Company, LLC

Background

Gracemarie Venticinque filed a proposed class action concerning Back to Nature Foods Company, LLC’s statement “Organic Whole Wheat Flour” on the front of its Back to Nature Stoneground Wheat Crackers. The complaint asserted claims under New York General Business Law §§ 349 and 350 and sought to represent a class of New York purchasers.

The opinion states that the District Court dismissed the claims in August 2023 because no reasonable consumer could be deceived, and that the Second Circuit reversed that decision in July 2024 and sent the case back for further proceedings, including discovery. The case-management schedule set October 1, 2025, as the deadline for completing fact discovery.

Discovery dispute

On November 1, 2024, Venticinque served document requests. She said that Back to Nature had not produced documents and had stated during a January 24, 2025, meeting that it had not yet begun searching for them. Back to Nature later agreed to begin a rolling production but did not agree to a date for substantial completion before the close of fact discovery.

Ventinicque asked the court to require substantial completion of document production by April 30, 2025. She also challenged Back to Nature’s position that it would generally limit production to documents from September 1, 2019, forward. She requested documents regardless of creation date, including product labels through the present.

The disputed requests included documents about how the product’s wheat ingredients were milled or produced; consumer understanding of the labels; potential competitors; pricing and consumer surveys; the target consumer demographic; and employees involved in formulating, packaging, labeling, advertising, or marketing the product. Venticinque argued that these materials could be relevant to liability, class certification, damages, defenses, and trial preparation. Back to Nature’s written responses included objections based on relevance, breadth, burden, ambiguity, privilege, confidentiality, and other grounds, and stated that it would not produce some requested materials as written.

Court’s action

The court marked the request “DENIED.” Judge Valerie Caproni explained that the case had not been referred to Magistrate Judge Valerie Figueredo because the parties’ case-management plan did not jointly include that referral. The order also referred to the court’s individual rule requiring parties with a discovery dispute to meet and confer in good faith and, if the dispute remains unresolved, to jointly call chambers.

The order denied the discovery-conference request. It did not decide whether the requested documents were relevant, whether Back to Nature’s objections were valid, or whether Back to Nature had to produce the materials described in Venticinque’s letter.