Settlement reached in Gerber Good Start infant formula class action

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Update: 

• The Gerber settlement website is currently not live, but TCA will provide an update when it is. In the meantime, join our newsletter for updates on this and other class action settlements. 
• Gerber agreed to a settlement that ends claims the company falsely advertised its baby formula could help prevent infants from developing allergies. 
• The Gerber settlement includes up to $11.25 million in attorney fees alone and millions more in partial refunds for eligible class members. 
• The settlement will benefit a class of New York and Florida consumers who purchased Gerber’s Good Start Gentle infant formula between October 2011 and April 2016, thus bringing a decade-long case to closure. 
• Consumers argued Gerber falsely advertised that the infant formula was endorsed by the Food and Drug Administration as being able to help prevent allergy development, despite the agency rejecting the claims in 2016 and 2019. 

A New York judge has recommended that New York and Florida customers who bought Gerber’s Good Start Gentle baby formula get Class certification in their false advertising lawsuit.

According to the plaintiffs, the formula did not help prevent allergies and was not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, as Gerber advertised.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Ramon E. Reyes Jr. made the recommendation to the Eastern District of New York last week.

Judge Reyes determined that the New York and Florida consumers who purchased Good Start Gentle baby formula satisfied state law requirements, and should be approved for Class certification.

However, he said the proposed Class of North Carolina consumers and the proposed Class of multistate consumers failed because of stipulations in state laws.

The judge stated that to qualify to be in a Class, the other state laws require each Class Member to show that they relied on a specific misrepresentation by a company to make a purchasing decision.

The Gerber false advertising class action lawsuit was filed by consumers who bought the Gerber’s Good Start Gentle baby formula between May 2011 and May 2016 in New York, Florida, North Carolina, and other states. Allegedly, consumers were misled by claims that Gerber made about its formula.

The plaintiffs took issue with Gerber’s claims that its Good Start formula was the “1st and Only” formula approved by the FDA to help reduce a child’s risk of developing allergies.

According to the Gerber consumers, the FDA reject Gerber’s application to have these claims approved.

In 2014, the FDA allegedly sent a warning letter to Gerber telling the company to stop claiming that they had received FDA approval when they had not.

Additionally, the Federal Trade Commission also sued the company around the same time over the issue.

Gerber attempted to have the Good Start false advertising class action lawsuit thrown out by saying that the consumers’ who filed the proposed Gerber class action lawsuit did not have comparable experiences and could not file a class action lawsuit because they had not been exposed to the same advertising for the product.

However, Judge Reyes disagreed with this interpretation, and sided with the customers. He said that exposure to particular marketing misrepresentations is not an element in the consumers’ misrepresentation claim.

The judge went on to say that the consumers’ injuries were caused by them paying for a product that did not perform as advertised, because Gerber marketed the product to consumers’ as adhering to certain claims.

Judge Reyes was persuaded by customers’ arguments that they would not have paid as much for the formula or would not have purchased it had all had they known that it would not help prevent allergies and was not approved by the FDA to do so.

According to Judge Reyes, Gerber’s “arguments against adequacy rest on [customers’] imperfect performance in a memory game. Yet the plaintiffs’ ability to match their memories of advertisements — which they purport to have seen as long as 2012 — to the exact marketing campaigns running at the time hardly indicates a lack of truthfulness.”

The customers are represented by Miles Greaves of Taus Cebulash & Landau LLP.

The Gerber’s Good Start Gentle Baby Formula Class Action Lawsuit is Hasemann, et al. v. Gerber Products Co., et al., Case No. 1:15-cv-02995, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

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