A federal judge has melted an attempted class action lawsuit against dairy distributor Prairie Farms, ending, for now, claims the dairy misled consumers by selling “Premium Vanilla Ice Cream” that contained vanilla flavoring, rather than pure vanilla or extract.
U.S. District Judge Elaine E. Bucklo dismissed the class action brought against Edwardsville-based Prairie Farms in a decision issued May 19.
“Ice cream is routinely identified by its flavor not by its ingredients,” Judge Bucklo said in her decision.
Spencer Sheehan
| spencersheehan.com
“When a parent decides to take her child out for ice cream, she does not ask the child what ingredients he wants. Instead, she asks, ‘What flavor do you want?’
“And a reasonable answer to this question is, ‘Vanilla, please.’”
Bucklo’s ruling comes as the latest in growing list of dismissals of class actions pending in courts against the U.S. over the alleged deceptive marketing of food products containing vanilla flavoring.
The lawsuits have taken aim at a variety of products marketed as “vanilla,” including soy milk, almond milk, cereal, chai tea mix, energy drinks, and shakes, among others.
In the lawsuit against Prairie Farms, the plaintiffs sued over the dairy’s vanilla ice cream.
The lawsuit was filed in April 2021, by attorney Spencer Sheehan, of the firm of Sheehan & Associates, of Great Neck, New York.
Sheehan has also filed a number of other attempted class action lawsuits in various court systems throughout the U.S. against food makers and distributors, over their flavoring claims. In Chicago federal court, these have included lawsuits against Ferrara Candy Company, saying their Keebler Fudge Mint cookies don’t contain real fudge or mint, and against Costco and Haagen-Dazs, claiming their chocolate ice cream bars don’t contain enough cocoa butter to qualify as real chocolate.
The lawsuit against Prairie Farms was filed on behalf of named plaintiffs Kelly Wach, of Green Bay, Wisconsin; and Bryan Bor and Leroy Jacobs, both of Chicago.
The lawsuit claims Prairie Farms’ product labeled and sold as “Premium Vanilla Ice Cream” contains only negligible traces of real vanilla, produced from the beans that grow in the fruit pod of the vanilla orchid plant.
Rather, the lawsuit claims, the ice cream instead uses so-called vanillin, a processed flavoring product designed to mimic the taste and aroma of real vanilla.
The lawsuit was filed under the Illinois consumer fraud law, and accused Prairie Farms of misleading consumers with allegedly false marketing.
In her ruling, however, Judge Bucklo said Praire Farms’ customers were not ever really deceived, because most “reasonable consumers” would not necessarily expect vanilla ice cream to contain actual vanilla. Instead, she said, consumers expect vanilla ice cream to taste like vanilla.
“The label does not state that the Product is flavored exclusively or even mostly by vanilla beans,” Bucklo wrote. “Indeed, it nowhere displays the words ‘vanilla bean’ or ‘vanilla extract,’ much less any statements conveying that the Product is ‘made with vanilla beans’ or ‘made with vanilla extract.’”
She further rejected plaintiffs’ claims that the ice cream should be labeled “artificially flavored” to avoid running afoul of state consumer fraud laws.
Bucklo dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice, giving plaintiffs until June 20 to file an amended complaint, “to the extent plaintiffs have a good faith basis for filing” a new complaint to try again.
Prairie Farms has been represented in the case by attorneys Sarah L. Brew, Tyler A. Young, Rory F. Collins and Ruben I. Gonzalez, of the firm of Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, with offices in Minneapolis and Chicago.