Vallejo v. The Neil Jones Food Company

Background

Joseph Vallejo, Victor Espericueta, and Christopher Jones filed a proposed class action against The Neil Jones Food Company, doing business as San Benito Foods. The company owns and operates a tomato cannery in Hollister, California. The complaint alleges that noxious odors from the facility repeatedly invaded the plaintiffs’ properties and surrounding public land. The plaintiffs claim the company failed to use proper practices to prevent, collect, capture, or treat the odors. They also allege that the odors interfered with their use and enjoyment of their property and that the Monterey Bay Air Resources District issued the company three odor-related violation notices during the preceding three years.

The Defendant’s Filings

The defendant moved to dismiss the complaint and strike the proposed class allegations. The court found that the motion was filed one day late and without permission to file late. The defendant also filed an answer, a crossclaim against Sunnyslope County Water District, and an amended crossclaim within approximately 30 minutes on April 7, 2025. Because the answer was filed almost immediately after the motion, the court treated the filings as effectively coinciding and concluded that the motion could be denied as untimely under the federal civil rules.

The court also found independent reasons to deny the motion. It determined that at least a dozen paragraphs were substantively identical or nearly word-for-word copies of a motion filed in a different case for a different defendant by different lawyers. The copied motion even referred to the plaintiff in that other case rather than the plaintiffs in this case. The court stated that copying another party’s work without citation or attribution could support sanctions for violating Rule 11, which governs representations made to a court.

Merits of the Motion

The court did not rely only on the filing problems and plagiarism. It considered the defendant’s merits arguments, including whether the plaintiffs alleged an actual injury, whether economic losses could support negligence claims under California law, whether noxious-odor allegations could support private and public nuisance claims, and whether plaintiffs could seek future damages for nuisances that could be corrected. The court adopted in full the reasoning from the earlier related proceeding, which had rejected the same arguments, and concluded that the reasoning applied equally here.

Ruling and Further Proceedings

Judge Noél Wise denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss and motion to strike class allegations with prejudice. The court also ordered the defendant to show cause—meaning to explain why sanctions should not be imposed—for the plagiarism. Defense counsel was ordered to file a written response by July 14, 2025, including the sanctions defense counsel believed was appropriate. The court scheduled a show-cause hearing and a case-management conference for July 28, 2025, and required the parties to file an updated joint case-management statement by July 14, 2025.