Posted April 28, 2014
Last week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments
in the food labeling case, POM
Wonderful v. Coca-Cola. Ronald
Mann from SCOTUS Blog wrote a thorough analysis of the argument here. Forbes,
the New
York Times, and Reason
Magazine also reported on the story.
The arguments focus on whether the Food, Drug, and
Cosmetic Act (FDCA) bars a false-advertising claim under the Lanham Act.
In 2008, Pom Wonderful filed suit against Coca-Cola,
claiming that Coca-Cola made false claims under the Lanham Act because its
Minute Maid “Pomegranate Blueberry” juice contained 99 percent apple and grape
juices, only 0.3 percent pomegranate juice, and 0.2 percent blueberry juice.
The
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FDCA and its regulations
prohibited name and labeling claims under the Lanham Act, which authorizes
lawsuits against defendants who use false or misleading descriptions about any
goods. The order is available here.
In it appeal, POM
argued that: “(1) Neither the Lanham Act nor the FDCA includes any explicit
limitation on the application of the Lanham Act to this controversy; (2) the
court should imply such a limitation only if the statutes are in irreconcilable
conflict; and (3) the statutes are not in irreconcilable conflict because
Coca-Cola can easily comply with both statutes.”
Coca-Cola argued that the FDCA preempts POM’s lawsuit
under the Lanham Act, because the FDA has exclusive authority to regulate food
labels.
According
to SCOTUS Blog, the Justices spoke frankly, quickly rejecting Coca-Cola’s
preemption argument. Justice Kagan
commented that “there are plenty of statutes which say you can’t bring State
law or Federal law claims. Congress
knows how to do that.”
Justice Sotomayor, along with others, asked how
Coca-Cola’s argument can follow its recent decision in Wyeth
v. Levine, which permitted a state tort suit for failure to warn based on
pharmaceutical label that FDA explicitly required the manufacturer to use.
Justice Kennedy asked: “Is it part of Coke’s narrow
position that national uniformity consists in labels that cheat the consumers
like this one did?” Justice Kennedy also
asked: “You want us to write an opinion that said that Congress enacted a
statutory scheme because it intended that no matter how misleading or deceptive
a label it is, if it passes the FDA, there can be no liability. That’s what you want us to say?”
The Chief Justice and others suggested that the FDCA
and the Lanham Act should be treated as two separate “regimes,” serving
different purposes.
Justice Ginsburg closed the argument with “what seemed to
be the consensus of the Court” with a question posed to Coca-Cola: “In the real world, the FDA has a tremendous
amount of things on its plate, and labels for juices are not really high on its
list. It has very limited resources. You are asking us to take what it has said
about juice as blessing this label, saying it’s not misbranding, when its
regulations aren’t reviewed by the Court, when there is no private right of
action, and say that that overtakes the Lanham Act. It’s really very hard to conceive that
Congress would have done that.”
For more information on food labeling, please visit the
National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
