Nellie’s Free Range Eggs Come From Mistreated Hens, Class Action Says

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

Four consumers claim that Nellie’s Free Range Eggs are misrepresented as being from laying hens that are treated humanely.

Plaintiffs Michelle Lugones, Marcus Siezing, Tricia Rizzi, and Claudia Vassallo have filed a class action lawsuit against Nellie’s Free Range Eggs and the company’s owner, Pete and Gerry’s Organics LLC.

The plaintiffs claim that Nellie’s misleads consumers into believing that the hens that lay the eggs are treated well, when in reality they are cruelly treated.

Lugones and Siezing are a married couple who say they make purchasing decisions around animal welfare.

The Nellie’s eggs class action lawsuit claims the couple specifically selected Nellie’s eggs because the package represented that the hens were free range, the company prioritized treating hens with “love” and were given a good life.

The plaintiffs say that these representations are false and used to entice consumers into buying Nellie’s eggs over others and paying a premium for them.

The Nellie’s eggs class action lawsuit states that Lugones is a veterinarian, and Siezing grew up on a farm, so animal welfare is at the forefront of their minds when they make purchasing decisions.

The plaintiffs say that they both purchased Nellie’s eggs numbers times between 2017 and 2018 from a Whole Foods in New York.

They say that they made their decision based on the images on the packaging of Nellie’s.

The Nellie’s class action lawsuit claims the packaging shows images of hens being depicted as “happy” and “enjoying themselves in green fields.” Allegedly, Nellie’s advertises that some of these hens even have names.

Lugones and Siezing say from these depictions they understood that Nellie’s hens were well treated, and believed that they were purchasing eggs sourced from small farms that provided hens with ample space to move around indoors and outdoors. 

In reality, the Nellie’s class action lawsuit alleges that the hens are crammed into a small hen house, with very little access to the outdoors.

Although there is a door to the outdoors, most hens cannot access it because they are so tightly packed into the hen house, the plaintiffs claim.

The Nellie’s hen treatment class action lawsuit goes on to say that the hens have their beaks mutilated, and are forced to lay eggs until they no longer can, at which point they are sold to slaughterhouses.

The Nellie’s eggs class action lawsuit goes on to say that Nellie’s charges a premium for their eggs, which customers who are concerned with animal welfare are willing to pay.

For her part, Rizzi notes that she is willing to pay a premium for eggs “in order to ensure that she is supporting humane animal husbandry practices.”

Rizzi says that she regularly purchased Nellie’s eggs and also encouraged her friends to buy Nellie’s eggs.

Allegedly, one of these friends was Vassallo, who purchased Nellie’s eggs for more than three years. She says that had she known that the hens were cruelly treated, she would never have paid premium prices for Nellie’s eggs.

The customers are represented by Jeanne M. Christensen and Julia Elmaleh-Sachs of Wigdor LLP and by Asher Smith of PETA Foundation.

The Nellie’s Free Range Eggs Class Action Lawsuit is Michelle Lugones, et al. v. Pete and Gerry’s Organics LLC, et al., Case No. 1:19-cv-02097, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.