Diet Dr Pepper Class Action Lawsuit Scrapped for the Last Time

A class action lawsuit claiming that Dr Pepper falsely advertises its diet drinks has been scrapped by a California federal judge for a final time, with no opportunity for the consumer to revise her claims.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick threw out the class action lawsuit alleging that Dr Pepper improperly used the term “diet” to advertise its Diet Dr Pepper product.

Plaintiff Shana Becerra had been given multiple chances to review her Diet Dr Pepper class action lawsuit, but last week Judge Orrick determined that she had failed to show that consumers would be misled into thinking that drinking Diet Dr Pepper would help them manage their weight.

Per Tuesday’s decision, Becerra will not have a chance to revise her argument again, so the case will be permanently dismissed.

This decision is preceded by another decision in April by Judge Orrick to throw out the Dr Pepper advertising class action lawsuit, but allow Becerra to amend her complaint.

The California federal judge says that the changes Becerra made to her claim since then did not actually help show that consumers would be misled by the label, an idea that was the crux of her argument.

Judge Orrick determined that Becerra’s addition of dictionary definitions of the term “diet,” studies and articles on diet soft drinks, and a consumer survey on the perceptions around diet soda, were insufficient to advance her argument.

In her initial Dr Pepper diet soda class action lawsuit, Becerra says that reasonable consumers would be misled into believing that drinking Diet Dr Pepper would help them lose weight.

She claims that she purchased Diet Dr Pepper for more than 13 years, and chose the product over other sodas because she believed that the beverage would help her manage her weight.

Becerra alleges that she came to this conclusion based on Dr Pepper’s use of the term “diet” to describe the soda.

In Becerra’s Dr Pepper weight loss class action lawsuit, she alleges that the artificial sweetener used in Diet Dr Pepper instead of sugar, aspartame, actually can cause a person to gain weight more than sugar would.

She says that artificial sweeteners like aspartame and others “interfere with the body’s ability to properly metabolize calories, leading to weigh gain an increased risk of metabolic disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.”

Thus, Becerra argues that not only does Diet Dr Pepper not actually help people lose weight, but can cause them to gain it.

However, Judge Orrick determined on Tuesday that the studies she had cited merely showed a correlation between artificial sweetener consumption and weight gain, not a causation.

The judge went on to say that “none of the studies supply the possibility of a causal link between Diet Dr Pepper and weight gain.”

Judge Orrick was not the only one to express his lack of faith in Becerra’s Dr Pepper false claims class action lawsuit – Becerra’s own lawyers allegedly stated that it would be futile to continue to try to amend the Diet Dr Pepper labeling class action lawsuit.

Becerra is represented by Andrew B. Sacks and John K. Weston of Sacks Weston Diamond LLC; and Jack Fitzgerald, Melanie Rae Persinger, and Trevor Matthew Flynn of the Law Office of Jack Fitzgerald PC.

The Diet Dr Pepper False Adverting Class Action Lawsuit is Becerra v. Dr Pepper/Seven Up Inc., Case No. 3:17-cv-05921, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.