EAST ST. LOUIS – Two local men who claim Red Baron pizza labels deceived them must produce grocery receipts whether Red Baron purchases appear on the receipts or not, U.S. District Judge David Dugan ruled on June 8.
Dugan had decided that all receipts were potentially relevant at a hearing for Jamie Jackson and Trenton McDonald of St. Clair County on May 5.
Jackson and McDonald claim labels on Red Baron’s brick oven cheese trio, classic crust four cheese, and thin and crispy five cheese pizzas fraudulently stated “preservative free crust” and “no artificial flavors.”
At the hearing, Dugan wrote, their counsel asserted that receipts that didn’t include Red Baron were irrelevant.
“But defendant contends that evidence that plaintiffs purchased other groceries that were marketed as free of preservatives or artificial flavors goes directly to the materiality of their claims regarding the Red Baron pizzas,” Dugan wrote.
He gave Jackson and McDonald 14 days to search for and start producing all grocery receipts, printed and electronic, for five years.
“They must keep the original receipts intact and produce copies of the receipts but may redact inedible items from the copies if they wish to do so,” he wrote.
Attorneys David Nelson of Belleville and Matthew Armstrong of Brentwood, Mo., represent Jackson and McDonald.
They filed a class action complaint against Red Baron manufacturer SFC Global Supply Chain in St. Clair County circuit court last September.
They asserted consumer fraud, breach of express warranty, and unjust enrichment, and they proposed a class period of five years.
SFC Global counsel Michael Jente removed it to district court in October, asserting diversity jurisdiction as a Minnesota citizen.
He wrote that in five years through last August, retail outlets in Illinois sold more than 4.4 million pizzas.
He claimed the class would include tens of thousands by any reasonable estimate.
At $3.99 per pizza, he wrote, refunds would result in damages of $17.6 million.
In November, Jente moved for judgment on the pleadings.
He claimed plaintiffs provided no basis for believing the modified food starch and soy and corn proteins weren’t derived from natural plant sources.
He claimed they asserted that ingredients used to prevent bread from going stale must function as preservatives in pizza that is stored frozen.
In April, Dugan dismissed the breach of warranty claim with prejudice for failure to notify SFC Global before suing.
He found Jackson and McDonald made a plausible claim of unjust enrichment.
He dismissed the consumer fraud claim and granted leave to amend it.
Nelson amended it in May, to state that plaintiffs and reasonable consumers have been actually deceived by misrepresentations.
“Because of defendant’s deceitful label, defendant could charge, and plaintiffs and class members paid, a premium for the pizzas,” Nelson wrote.
He claimed the pizzas were worth less than they were represented to be.
Jente moved to dismiss the complaint on June 8, claiming plaintiffs doubled down on fundamental flaws that doomed the original complaint.
He claimed they didn’t remotely attempt to rectify deficiencies including failure to allege how the labels resulted in injury or damages.
He moved to stay discovery pending a decision on the motion to dismiss.