MANHATTAN (CN) — The Second Circuit entered a judgment Monday in favor of Nature’s Bounty, a vitamin and nutritional supplement company, after consumers claimed the company wrongfully classified their product as “fish oil” when it is in fact a synthetic omega-3 product.
The court affirmed a judge’s decision to dismiss the case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, finding that the product labeling wasn’t misleading because fish oil is the common name for the Nature’s Bounty products.
Mashon Baines and Nancy Froning, the named plaintiffs in the class action, said that the product cannot be called “fish oil” because a particular step in Nature’s Bounty’s processing transforms it from fish oil into a synthetic substance.
In its decision, a panel of judges in the Second Circuit found that “it is not plausible that the challenged labeling would materially mislead reasonable consumers.”
The panel included U.S. Circuit Judge Amalya L. Kearse, a Jimmy Carter appointee; U.S. Circuit Judge Alison J. Nathan, a Joe Biden appointee; and U.S. Circuit Judge Guido Calabresi, a Bill Clinton appointee.
Though it is derived from natural fish oil, the consumers claim, the supplement has been esterified, meaning the omega-3s in the fish oil have been changed from their naturally occurring triglyceride form to ethyl-ester form, which is produced by reacting crude fish oil in a free fatty acid form with ethanol.
In oral arguments in November, plaintiffs argued that the molecular difference transforms the product into something fundamentally different, and that matters to consumers.
But the Second Circuit disagreed, saying the consumers failed to demonstrate that a reasonable consumer would care about that distinction.
“The complaint alleges in a conclusory fashion that consumers care about the distinction between triglyceride and ethyl-ester omega-3s, but it does not provide any supporting allegations that make it plausible that consumers who purchase defendants’ product are actually thinking about the molecular form of their fish-oil-derived omega-3s at all,” judges on the panel wrote in their decision.
The judges added that, if it does matter to any consumer, the product’s back label says the omega-3s are present “as ethyl esters.”
“This additional information cures any potential ambiguity from the front label as to the form of the omega-3s in the supplement,” the judges said.
The Second Circuit also affirmed the federal court’s decision to deny the plaintiffs’ leave to amend, saying they already amended their complaint in the face of a pre-motion letter from Nature’s Bounty arguing that the label was not misleading, and the back label addressed any ambiguity.
The judges found that the plaintiffs’ second attempt to amend their complaint, following the company’s motion to dismiss, failed to specify what the amendment would include.
Follow @NikaSchoonover
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
Treble trouble April 26, 2024 -
