Lawyers ‘get fat’ on frivolous suits: report
New Yorkers are already wellknown dining snobs — but this is just foodie foolishness.
There’s been a surge in class-action lawsuits filed in the city by persnickety Gothamites complaining about how their food is marketed — and now nearly a quarter of all such federal cases in the country are filed in New York state, according to a report.
Many of the lawsuits claim products are not as “natural” or as “healthy” as advertised, while others allege there’s a deceptive amount of extra space in the packaging.
“The [Brooklyn-based] Eastern District of New York, in particular, has experienced a surge of lawsuits targeting food products over the past two years, and the [Manhattan-based] Southern District is not far behind,” the report from the Institute for Legal Reform says.
The surge “appears to result from a few plaintiffs’ firms repeatedly filing such claims,” it contends.
The increase in the Big Apple’s federal food suits is part of a nationwide trend. Between 2015 and 2016, there were 425 active food class-action suits in federal courts; in 2008, there were only about 20.
Twenty-two percent of all such current federal cases were either filed in or transferred to New York state. Only California is more litigious when it comes to food-related class actions, as its cases account for 36 percent of the total.
“A few are so laughable that courts have quickly thrown them out,” the report says. “Some are withdrawn or dismissed, typically as a result of a private settlement. Many more are litigated for years.”
Among the current cases in New York is a class action filed by Brooklynite Tamika Daniel against Mondelez International in Janu- ary, claiming the confectionery company is deceiving customers by leaving their boxes of Swedish Fish 63 percent empty.
The lawsuit argues the amount of “slack-fill,” or empty space, violates the Federal Food Drug & Cosmetic Act and the Code of Federal Regulations because it’s misleading consumers.
The institute report also points to an October 2016 case in which a Hudson Valley woman sued KFC for $20 million — because her $20 “family-sized” bucket of chicken wasn’t as full as she expected.
Most of the settlements in these cases “line the pockets of lawyers, but provide little or no benefit to consumers,” the Institute for Legal Reform report argues.
“The trial lawyers are getting fat on food lawsuits — and New Yorkers are picking up the bill,” said Tom Stebbins, executive director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York.
“People may laugh when Starbucks is sued for coffee that is too hot and sued again for coffee with too much ice, but these lawsuits should give everyone indigestion. The cost of defending these lawsuits is passed directly on to consumers like us.”
The report says lawyers handling the cases argue “that they do not need to show that consumers saw, heard, or relied on the labeling or advertising at issue when deciding to purchase the product, but only that consumers might be misled.”
Kim Richman’s firm, Richman Law Group, is one of the New York City firms cited in the report for having filed many food-related class actions.
He said there are more suits because “people’s consciousness around food has . . . been growing.”
“The government in this day and age is not doing enough to protect consumers,” he added.