In case you didn’t know, Crunchberries aren’t real berries. We know this because the Eastern District of California was forced to waste its time explaining that to intrepid plaintiff Janine Sugawara.
Ms. Sugawara attempted to bring a class-action suit against PepsiCo, makers of the tasty breakfast cereal who have bigger things to worry about, alleging misrepresentation, breach of warranty, unfair practices, etc.
The BigLaw angle, after the jump.
Pepsi uses Davis Polk’s Gar Bason (Harvard BA ‘75, JD ‘78) for transactional work, but when it comes to torpedo-ing nuisance consumer claims, they turn to Jones Day. Ricky* Shackelford** (Harvard BA ‘86, ASU JD ‘90), a Los Angeles litigation partner, and his associate Eric Enson*** (Baylor BBA ‘95, Loyola JD ‘99) were successful on the motion to dismiss without even having to argue.
The best part of the opinion is where we learn that someone had already made the same claims against Froot Loops.
For these same reasons, another California district court has previously rejected substantially similar claims directed against the packaging of Fruit Loops cereal, and brought by these same Plaintiff attorneys. See McKinnis v. Kellogg USA, 2007 WL 4766060 (C.D. Cal. 2007) (rejecting each argument pursued here).
FYI, Snozzberries aren’t real, either.
HT: Lowering the Bar
* His name appears as Ricky on the opinion, but Rick on his profile. “Richard” doesn’t appear anywhere. Go figure.
** We don’t link to Jones Day profiles because of this, and the tedious manner in which they expect people to link is absurd and not worth the effort. If they don’t want the traffic, fine with me.
*** We almost never link to associate profiles anyway.
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Janine also has a $5 BILLION suit pending against Pepsi…