Blue Moon Class Action Lawsuit Sunk by Second Dismissal

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For the second and presumably last time, a federal court has dismissed a consumer class action lawsuit over whether Blue Moon beer can truly be described as “craft beer.”

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel accepted MillerCoors’s arguments that plaintiff Evan Parent’s second amended complaint still failed to allege an actionable misrepresentation.

MillerCoors successfully argued that no reasonable consumer would be deceived by its advertising of Blue Moon beer. The company also argued that Parent could not hold it responsible for representations by a third party and that the pricing of Blue Moon does not constitute a representation.

Judge Curiel determined that Blue Moon advertisement videos “The Story of Blue Moon,” “The SandLot Guys” and “Our Approach to Brewing” are merely “non-actionable puffery.”

“Plaintiff fails to point to any ‘specific and measurable claim[s], capable of being proved false or of being reasonably interpreted as a statement of objective fact made in the advertisements,” the judge said.

The judge also determined MillerCoors could not incur liability for retailers’ shelving and pricing of Blue Moon, since the company did not exercise enough control over those actions to be held responsible for them.

Judge Curiel denied Parent another opportunity to amend his Blue Moon class action lawsuit, having already given him one such opportunity before.

Parent filed this Blue Moon class action lawsuit in April 2015, alleging that MillerCoors falsely represented Blue Moon as a “craft beer.” Parent alleged he purchased Blue Moon from 2011 through mid-2012, paying a premium price for what he had been led to believe was craft beer.

Parent claimed that since Blue Moon was actually a product of large-scale mass production, it could not truthfully be labeled as a craft beer. His Blue Moon class action lawsuit raised claims under California’s False Advertising Law, Unfair Competition Law, and Consumer Legal Remedies Act.

After Judge Curiel dismissed Parent’s claims with leave to re-plead them, Parent came back a second time with new factual allegations he believed supported his argument that Blue Moon cannot be considered craft beer.

Among other allegations, he alleged that MillerCoors depicted Blue Moon as being brewed at a “small, limited capacity brewpub known as ‘The SandLot Brewery,’” when in fact it is allegedly brewed at MillerCoors’s facilities in Golden, Colo. and Eden, N.C.

Parent claimed MillerCoors depicts Blue Moon as having been developed by an independent individual brewer, Dr. Keith Villa – who Parent claims was actually a MillerCoors employee acting under direction of company executives.

He also claimed MillerCoors directs retailers to shelve Blue Moon in their craft beer sections and to price it two to three dollars more per six-pack than the average macrobrew, creating the allegedly false impression that the product is worth paying a premium price for.

Parent sought to represent a plaintiff Class consisting of all California residents who bought Blue Moon beer within four years prior to the date his Blue Moon class action lawsuit was filed.

Legal counsel for Parent are James M. Treglio, R. Craig Clark, Dawn M. Berry and Veronika Snoblova of Clark & Treglio.

The Blue Moon Deceptive Marketing Class Action Lawsuit is Evan Parent v. MillerCoors LLC, et al., Case No. 3:15-cv-01204, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.