Arizona “100% Natural” Georgia Peach Green Tea Drink Class Action

Arizona Beverages USA, LLC makes various kinds of canned and bottled drinks, including a Georgia Peach Green Tea with ginseng and peach juice. According to the complaint for this class action, Arizona advertises this product as being “100% Natural” while in reality the product contains a synthetic ingredient, dl-malic acid.

The class for this action is all persons in the US who bought the products between February 10, 2018 and the date the class is certified in this case. A California Subclass has also been defined, for those in the above class in California.

The complaint quotes Congress as defining a synthetic as “a substance[] that is formulated or manufactured by a chemical process or by a process that chemically changes a substance extracted from naturally occurring [sources]…”

There is no single hard-and-fast rule as to what qualifies as a natural product, but the Department of Agriculture has published a guidance decision tree to help with classifying substances as synthetic or non-synthetic. A reproduction of this decision tree appears on page 2 of the complaint.

Malic acid, which provides a tart taste, is one of the ingredients in the Arizona product. The complaint notes that malic acid has two isomers, or arrangements of atoms in its molecule. These are l-malic acid and d-malic acid.

Page 4 of the complaint shows skeletal formulas of l-malic acid and d-malic acid. The complaint claims, in a footnote, “The only structural difference between D-Malic Acid and L-Malic Acid is that one Hydroxide (OH-) is attached … at a different angle.”

L-malic acid is found naturally in a number of fruits, the complaint claims, but d-malic acid is not natural. D-malic acid, the complaint alleges, “is most commonly found in a Racemic Mixture, DL-Malic Acid, which is commercially made from petroleum products.” The complaint appears to alleges that the drink contains dl-malic acid.

Page 5 of the complaint shows an image of the can front and back, with a close-up of the words “100% Natural.” The complaint alleges that when the plaintiff made his decision to buy the drink, he did it based on this representation. It claims that he “did not understand that the Products contained synthetic ingredients and could not have known without an advanced understanding of chemistry.”

The complaint alleges that he could not have known that the drink contained a synthetic substance “due to [Arizona’s] intentional, deceitful practice of labeling the Products 100% natural…” It calls the “100% Natural claim “false and misleading.”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: All Natural Claims, Deceptive Advertising, Deceptive Labels