Prescott v. Abbott Laboratories
- Pitts
- 5:23-cv-04348
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 11
In Prescott v. Abbott Laboratories, Judge Pitts granted Abbott’s dismissal motion only for injunctive relief and otherwise denied it.
The plaintiffs’ claims for injunctive relief were dismissed with leave to amend, while Abbott’s motion to dismiss was otherwise denied. The order left the California statutory consumer-protection claims pending and set deadlines for any amended complaint and Abbott’s response.
What happened
In Prescott v. Abbott Laboratories, consumers challenged Abbott’s Glucerna labels, which say the products help manage blood sugar and are scientifically designed for people with diabetes. They alleged that sucralose and other additives could cause health problems that contradicted those claims.
The court found that the consumers plausibly alleged that a reasonable consumer could be misled by the labels. At this stage, the court accepted their allegations about the products’ health effects as true and did not require them to allege that they personally experienced those effects.
Judge P. Casey Pitts granted Abbott’s motion to dismiss the claims for injunctive relief, allowing the consumers to amend those claims, but otherwise denied the motion to dismiss. The statutory consumer-protection claims therefore remained pending, along with any other claims not dismissed by the order.
The detailed version
- Prescott v. Abbott Laboratories · No. 5:23-cv-04348
- Pitts
- June 5, 2024
Background
This putative consumer-fraud class action concerns Abbott Laboratories’s Glucerna shakes and powders. The products are marketed as being made to “help manage blood sugar,” as the “#1 doctor recommended brand,” and as “scientifically designed for people with diabetes.” At least some side labels state that the products are designed to help minimize blood-sugar spikes in people with diabetes compared with high-glycemic carbohydrates.
The plaintiffs alleged that Glucerna products contain sucralose and, for some products, carrageenan and maltodextrin. They cited scientific studies and organizational statements that they said identified health risks associated with those ingredients, including possible effects on blood sugar and insulin resistance. They alleged that the labels were false or misleading, that they relied on the labels when purchasing the products, and that they would not have paid the listed prices if they had known the labels were misleading.
The plaintiffs asserted claims under California’s Consumer Legal Remedies Act, False Advertising Law, and Unfair Competition Law, as well as common-law claims. The provided opinion text begins analyzing the common-law claims but does not include the rest of that discussion; the conclusion states the overall disposition of Abbott’s motion.
Legal standard
Abbott moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which tests whether a complaint states a legally sufficient claim. Because the statutory claims alleged fraud, the plaintiffs also had to satisfy Rule 9(b), which requires fraud to be pleaded with particularity. At this stage, the court treated the complaint’s factual allegations as true and asked whether the plaintiffs plausibly alleged that a reasonable consumer could be deceived.
Court’s analysis
The court rejected Abbott’s argument that the labels could only be understood as promising that Glucerna would reduce short-term blood-sugar spikes compared with high-glycemic foods. The court said that whether reasonable consumers would interpret the labels more broadly was a factual question. The court also concluded that the front-label statements about doctor recommendations and scientific design could plausibly communicate broader claims about how the products work.
The court considered the scientific studies cited in the complaint because the complaint referred to them extensively and they were central to the claims. Even after considering those studies, the court held that it could not replace the complaint’s allegations with its own interpretation of the scientific evidence. The allegations were not directly contradicted by the studies and were therefore accepted as true at the pleading stage.
The court also rejected Abbott’s argument that the plaintiffs had to allege that they consumed the products or personally experienced health effects. The court held that purchasing a product that was not what its labels promised could itself support an alleged injury if the labels were misleading.
The court concluded that the plaintiffs plausibly alleged that reasonable consumers could understand the labels to promise that Glucerna could help manage blood sugar and diabetes generally, and that the alleged effects of sucralose and other ingredients could contradict those promises. This was sufficient to state claims under the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act, False Advertising Law, and Unfair Competition Law.
The court reached a different conclusion about injunctive relief. It held that the plaintiffs had not alleged a real and immediate threat of repeated injury because they knew which ingredients were in the products and could check the ingredients list to determine whether those ingredients remained. The court therefore held that they lacked standing to seek an injunction based on the allegations in the complaint.
Disposition
The court granted Abbott’s motion to dismiss the claims for injunctive relief, with leave to amend, and otherwise denied Abbott’s motion to dismiss. An amended complaint was due June 27, 2024. If the plaintiffs did not file one, Abbott’s response was due July 11, 2024.
Read the full 11-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.