Could consumers have plausibly believed that one of the country’s top-selling bourbon brands is “handmade”? Not according to one federal district court in Florida, which recently dismissed a class action alleging Maker’s Mark deceived consumers by labeling its whiskey as “handmade.” The decision by U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle comes on the heels of a California federal court’s decision not to dismiss outright a similar consumer class action involving Tito’s Handmade Vodka. Compare Salters v. Beam Suntory, Inc., 14-cv-659, Dkt. 31, (N.D. Fla. May 1, 2015) with Hofmann v. Fifth Generation, Inc., 14-cv-2569, Dkt. 15 (S.D. Cal. Mar. 18, 2015)). These divergent opinions suggest that courts are still puzzling over just how much credence to grant putative class claims based on allegedly deceptive liquor labels at the motion to dismiss stage, particularly under the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bell Atlantic Corp v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007). In Twombly, the Court made clear that plaintiffs must include enough facts in a complaint to make their claim to relief not just conceivable, but plausible—or else face dismissal.
Salters, the Florida case, is part of a wave of recently filed class actions accusing alcoholic beverage producers of violating state consumer protection statutes. In the typical case, as here, the plaintiffs claim to have purchased the brand in reliance on allegedly deceptive labeling and contend they would not have purchased it or would have paid less otherwise. The Salters plaintiffs claimed they were damaged because Maker’s Mark sold “their ‘handmade’ Whisky to consumers with the false representation that the Whisky was ‘handmade’ when, in actuality, the Whisky is made via a highly-mechanized process, which is devoid of human hands.”
Judge Hinkle flatly rejected the idea that this could support a claim. Citing Twombly, he noted that although whether a label is false or misleading is generally a question of fact, a motion to dismiss should be granted if the complaint’s factual allegations do not “render plaintiffs’ entitlement to relief plausible.” The court observed that taken literally, all bourbon is handmade, because it is not a naturally occurring product; construed less literally, which was apparently the plaintiffs’ approach, “no reasonable consumer could believe” that bourbon could be made by hand, presumably without commercial-scale equipment, “at the volume required for a nationally marketed brand like Maker’s Mark.” In any event, court found the plaintiffs’ claims implausible under any definition of “handmade,” writing:
In sum, no reasonable person would understand “handmade” in this context to mean literally made by hand. No reasonable person would understand “handmade” in this context to mean substantial equipment was not used. If “handmade” means only made from scratch, or in small units, or in a carefully monitored process, then the plaintiffs have alleged no facts plausibly suggesting that statement is untrue. If “handmade” is understood to mean something else . . . the statement is the kind of puffery that cannot support claims of this kind.
The court appears to have concluded that when applied to a product as popular as Maker’s Mark, the word “handmade” is more an unactionable “general, undefined statement that connotes greater value,” like describing a bourbon as “smooth,” than a factual representation easily capable of being false or misleading. Though this may pass the common sense test, it is less clear whether other courts will agree. In the Tito’s case, for instance, the court declined to accept at the motion to dismiss stage an argument similar to the one that persuaded the Maker’s Mark judge, holding that “the representation that vodka that is (allegedly) mass-produced in automated modern stills from commercially manufactured neutral grain spirit is nonetheless “Handmade” in old-fashioned pot stills arguably could mislead a reasonable consumer.”
These cases highlight the need to carefully examine product labeling and advertising claims and consider whether consumers (or plaintiffs’ attorneys) could challenge them as untrue. This is relatively simple when claims involve factual issues such as where a product is produced, but less so with words like “handmade,” which could arguably qualify as either non-actionable “puffery” or a quantifiable claim.
