Drink Formula Sought in Honest Tea Class Action Lawsuit

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Last week, in the class action lawsuit accusing Honest Tea Inc. of falsely advertising that their green tea is a good source of antioxidants, the lead plaintiff filed a motion to obtain information about the company’s honey green tea.

Lead plaintiff Sarah Salazar alleges in her class action lawsuit filed in California federal court in November of 2013 that she relied on the representations of the company that the various antioxidant claims on the label for the green tea products were accurate. However, in January, the plaintiff updated the class action lawsuit to determine whether the company has the right to make claims regarding the amount of flavonoids and antioxidants the product contains.

On Wednesday, Salazar filed a motion to compel discovery of Honest Tea’s internal documents with information about the formulation and marketing strategy for its honey green tea. The request for production she had filed in February only resulted in publicly available materials that are “worthless,” according to Salazar.

“Defendant takes the extreme position that nearly every single one of plaintiff’s requests for production and interrogatories touch upon ‘merits’ issues, and, thus, defendant will not produce any responsive documents,” Salazar argues in her motion. “Defendant is not permitted to withhold information and documents that the court will require in ruling on plaintiff’s motion for class certification merely because defendant believes that such information touches upon ‘merits’ topics,” she continues.

In the motion filed Wednesday, Salazar argues that the class action lawsuit’s false advertising claims are based on whether it contained antioxidant nutrients such as vitamin A and C and that documents on the tea’s development would be necessary to support Class certification on the issue.

Salazar argued in her original class action lawsuit that Honest Tea lied about the antioxidant content of its beverage and she would have paid much less for tea leaves or tea bags of green tea if she had known. The Honest Tea class action lawsuit also alleged that the use of the word “honest” contributed to the deceptive nature of the company’s advertising campaigns.

In June 2014, U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller tossed most of the claims in the Honest Tea class action lawsuit and instructed Salazar to make claims that allege that the beverage’s labels violate the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act’s labeling requirements. The judge found that the original claims were preempted by the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act. The plaintiff’s amended class action lawsuit alleges that Honest Tea’s labeling statements infer that flavonoid antioxidants are present and fly in the face of FDA laws as well as various California state laws.

Honest Tea has indicated that it will move to dismiss the case using summary judgment in July of this year.

Salazar is represented by L. Timothy Fisher, Sarah N. Westcot and Annick M. Persinger of Bursor & Fisher PA.

The Honest Tea Class Action Lawsuit is Sarah A. Salazar v. Honest Tea Inc., Case No. 2:13-cv-02318 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.