Ansari v. Joe & The Juice New York LLC

Background

Neda Ansari, Malcom Brooks, Vy Le, Annabelle Pulver, Usra Salim, and Dana Whitten filed a putative class action against Joe & The Juice New York LLC and Joe & the Juice US Holdings, Inc. The complaint alleged that the defendants’ menus, applications, stores, advertisements, and other marketing materials represented that the defendants’ juices contained olive oil, while the plaintiffs alleged that the products instead contained a canola-oil mixture. The plaintiffs alleged that these representations caused them and other purchasers to pay a premium or buy products they otherwise would not have purchased.

The defendants sent a letter describing the legal and factual basis for an anticipated motion to dismiss. The opinion does not state that the defendants filed or that the court decided that motion.

Requested Amendments

The plaintiffs requested permission to amend their complaint to:

- replace their implied-warranty claim with a claim for breach of express warranty of merchantability and a claim under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, a federal law concerning consumer-product warranties; - add allegations about purchases during the previous two years and letters sent in April 2025 to notify the defendants of the claims; - expressly plead consumer-protection-law violations under the laws of California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Washington, as alternatives to claims under New York General Business Law sections 349 and 350; and - clarify that the unjust-enrichment claim was pleaded as an alternative to the other claims.

The plaintiffs’ letter argued that the alleged product descriptions could support an express-warranty claim and that the proposed state consumer-protection claims could be pleaded in the alternative. The letter also addressed the defendants’ arguments concerning the specificity required for the New York claims and whether those claims could cover harm occurring outside New York. The court’s order did not resolve those underlying arguments.

Order

The court allowed the plaintiffs to amend their complaint by September 5, 2025. The court further ordered that any pre-motion letter concerning the new pleading was due by September 15, vacated the September 2 conference, and stayed discovery pending further order.

This was a procedural order concerning amendment, scheduling, and discovery. It did not decide whether the alleged representations were false, whether any defendant violated warranty or consumer-protection law, whether a class should be certified, or whether the anticipated motion to dismiss should be granted or denied.