Prescott v. Nestle USA, Inc
- Beth Freeman
- 5:19-cv-07471
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Prescott v. Nestlé, Judge Freeman denied plaintiffs’ request to pause the case while related state appeals proceeded.
The ruling affects plaintiffs Steven Prescott and Linda Cheslow, who must proceed without the requested stay, and Nestlé USA, Inc., whose pending motion to dismiss remains scheduled for a January 6, 2022 hearing.
What happened
Steven Prescott and Linda Cheslow sued Nestlé USA, Inc., claiming consumers were misled into believing Nestlé’s Toll House Premier White Morsels contained white chocolate. They asked the court to pause the case while two related state appeals were resolved.
The court denied the request. It found that further delay would be unfair to Nestlé, the plaintiffs had not shown that they would suffer hardship without a pause, and the state appeals were not necessary to resolve Nestlé’s pending request to dismiss the case.
Judge Freeman ordered the case to continue and kept Nestlé’s motion to dismiss set for a January 6, 2022 hearing.
The detailed version
- Prescott v. Nestle USA, Inc · No. 5:19-cv-07471
- Beth Freeman
- Dec. 15, 2021
Background
Steven Prescott and Linda Cheslow brought this putative class action individually and on behalf of others similarly situated. They allege that Nestlé USA, Inc. deceives consumers into believing that its “Nestlé’s Toll House’s Premier White Morsels” product contains white chocolate when it does not.
The plaintiffs previously obtained a stay, or pause, while an appeal proceeded in an earlier related case involving allegations about another white-chip product. After that appeal was voluntarily dismissed, the court reopened this case and rescheduled Nestlé’s motion to dismiss the second amended complaint for January 6, 2022.
The plaintiffs then sought a second stay while appeals proceeded in two California state-court cases. They argued that those appeals involved issues relevant to this case and could produce binding precedent. Nestlé opposed the motion.
Court’s analysis
The court applied a balancing test for deciding whether to stay a case. The relevant considerations were possible harm from granting the stay, hardship or unfairness from requiring a party to proceed, and whether a stay would promote the orderly resolution of the case. The party requesting the stay bears the burden of showing that it is needed.
The court concluded that the plaintiffs did not meet that burden. First, Nestlé’s motion to dismiss had already been delayed for about a year while the earlier appeal was pending, and the earlier appeal did not produce appellate guidance because it was dismissed. The court found that requiring Nestlé to wait longer for a ruling on a potentially case-ending motion would be unfair.
Second, the plaintiffs did not identify a hardship or unfairness they would suffer if the case continued. Their hope that the state appeals would produce decisions favorable to their position was not enough. Third, the court was not persuaded that a stay would promote an orderly resolution because the issues in Nestlé’s motion were not particularly complicated and the Ninth Circuit had already provided guidance on the pleading standards for the plaintiffs’ California Unfair Competition Law, False Advertising Law, and Consumer Legal Remedies Act claims.
Disposition
The court denied the plaintiffs’ motion to stay the litigation. It did not decide Nestlé’s motion to dismiss in this order. That motion remained set for hearing on January 6, 2022.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.