Judge Dismisses Junior Mints Slack-Fill Class Action Lawsuit

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A judge has dismissed a class action lawsuit claiming that Junior Mints boxes are underfilled, stating that consumers had unrealistic expectations for the level of specificity and description on the candy box’s labeling.

On Wednesday, New York federal judge Naomi Reice Buchwald dismissed the class action lawsuit that claimed Junior Mint boxes contained too much slack-fill, despite a move by the consumers to keep their candy slack-fill class action lawsuit alive.

According to Judge Bushwald, the consumers had not sufficiently shown that the candy’s packaging was misleading.

She states that to allow the Junior Mints class action lawsuit to move forward would be to “enshrine into the law an embarrassing level of mathematical illiteracy,” rejecting the consumers’ claim that most consumers would not be able to determine how much candy was in the box by multiplying the number candy pieces in a suggested serving size by the number of serving sizes in a box.

Additionally, she rejected the consumers’ argument that consumers would think that the candy pieces were bigger than they actually were given that the image of the candy on the box is bigger than the actual pieces of candy.

She states that this argument is unpersuasive because “as [the consumers] themselves acknowledge, consumers are about the density or volume of a product only as it relates to the amount or quantity of food,” suggesting that consumers would not be able to discern the amount of candy in a box from one piece of candy shown in an image.

The judge then went on to argue that the consumers had failed to show that the empty space, or slack-fill, in the boxes was nonfunctional. The consumers’ argued that the Junior Mints boxes violated laws that prohibit the inclusion of non-functional slack-fill in packaging.

The judge argued that the consumers did not show that the slack-fill in the Junior Mints box was nonfictional, and that they had merely made comparisons to other cases in which slack-fill had been determined to be nonfunctional.

She stated that this method of proving their argument was insufficient because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, even though they have outlawed nonfunctional slack-fill, has not set forth specific determinations as what levels of slack-fill count as nonfunctional or functional because even within similar types of food, factors like settling, product shape, and manufacturing needs will change the amount of slack-fill in a package.

Judge Buchwald stated specifically that “consistent with [the variations among products], the FDA rejected the idea of a specific volume threshold after which slack-fill in a particular product, such as potato chips … and chocolate covered candy here, would be deemed nonfunctional.”

The Junior Mints slack-fill class action lawsuit was originally filed in October 2017 against Tootsie Roll Inc., the makers of Junior Mints, by plaintiffs Biola Daniel, Abel Duran, and Trekeela Perkins, claiming that the amount of slack-fill in Junior Mints boxes was nonfunctional and therefore violated the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and violated state consumer protection and business practice laws in New York and Mississippi.

The consumers are represented by C.K. Lee and Anne Seelig of Lee Litigation Group PLLC.

The Junior Mints Nonfunctional Slack-Fill Class Action Lawsuit is Daniel, et al. v. Tootsie Roll Industries LLC, Case No. 1:17-cv-07541, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.