Moore v. Mars Petcare US, Inc.

Background

Greta Ervin and Renee Edgren asserted California claims under the Unfair Competition Law, False Advertising Law, and Consumer Legal Remedies Act. Ervin bought three Royal Canin Veterinary Diet products for her dog, Teddy. Edgren bought an Iams Veterinary Formula product for her dog, Barkley. Both plaintiffs bought the products after veterinary recommendations that they understood as prescriptions.

Plaintiffs alleged that the products’ veterinary-authorization requirement led them to believe, incorrectly, that the food contained drugs or medicine. For injunctive relief, they asked the court to prohibit Royal Canin and Mars from requiring a prescription or similar veterinary authorization for pet food unless it contained drugs or medicine. Alternatively, they sought a label disclaimer stating that the product contained no drug or medicine and required no prescription.

In an earlier order, the court had denied part of Royal Canin’s and Mars’s original summary-judgment motions and deferred the question of available relief. The defendants then filed supplemental motions for summary judgment directed at Ervin’s and Edgren’s claims for injunctive relief.

Legal standard

Under Rule 56, summary judgment is appropriate when there is no genuine dispute about a material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. The court must view reasonable inferences from the evidence in favor of the party opposing the motion.

The court explained that constitutional standing is required to invoke federal jurisdiction. Standing requires an injury that is concrete and actual or imminent, a connection between that injury and the defendant’s conduct, and a likelihood that the requested relief would remedy the injury. A plaintiff must establish standing separately for each type of relief sought.

For an injunction against allegedly misleading advertising or labeling, a previously misled consumer must show both a desire or intent to buy the product in the future and an ongoing inability to rely on the product’s information. A mere possibility of future harm is not enough.

Court’s analysis

Future purchase intent. The court found that neither plaintiff had presented evidence of an affirmative desire to purchase the products again. When asked whether she might ever buy prescription diet pet food again, Ervin answered that she would not unless there were an actual controlled drug in it. Edgren likewise answered that she would not buy it if it contained no drug.

The court rejected plaintiffs’ argument that these statements showed a desire to buy the products if they were reformulated to contain drugs or medicine. It characterized that possibility as insufficient to establish an affirmative intent to purchase the products again. The court also noted that plaintiffs could have submitted declarations stating that they wanted to make future purchases but had not done so.

No likely future deception. The court separately held that plaintiffs lacked standing because they would not be misled by the veterinary-authorization requirement in the future. Plaintiffs now knew that references to prescription pet food did not represent that the food contained drugs or medicine. If they remained uncertain about a product’s contents, the court found they could examine the label, research ingredients using Google, or consult a veterinarian.

The court distinguished a case involving “flushable” wipes, where the consumer could not determine whether the product claim was accurate without buying and testing the product again. Here, the court found plaintiffs could evaluate the pet food’s contents without purchasing it. The court also rejected plaintiffs’ arguments that they could not be expected to read ingredient lists or rely on veterinarians, reasoning that the available methods were sufficient and that plaintiffs had not shown they were likely to receive misinformation from their own veterinarians.

Edgren’s discontinued-product argument. Mars also argued that Edgren lacked standing because Mars had stopped making and selling the Iams Veterinary Formula products, including the Iams product she bought. Mars submitted evidence that it stopped production in October 2016, permanently discontinued the products on January 1, 2017, and did not intend to resume manufacturing or distributing them.

Edgren argued that Mars had effectively transferred the product from the Iams brand to the Royal Canin brand. The court treated this as, in substance, an argument that Mars should be liable for Royal Canin’s conduct. It found that Mars had provided uncontroverted evidence that Mars and Royal Canin were separate corporate entities, that Edgren had provided no evidence supporting treating them as one company, and that she could not raise that theory for the first time at the summary-judgment stage.

The court further held that this argument would not change the result because Mars had provided uncontroverted evidence that Royal Canin no longer sold the relevant product or other pet food containing kangaroo in California, and had discontinued sales of the relevant Royal Canin product in the United States.

Disposition

For the alternative reasons stated in the opinion, the court granted the defendants’ motions for summary judgment on plaintiffs’ claims for injunctive relief. The opinion does not state that this order resolved the plaintiffs’ other requested remedies or every claim in the case.