Bhotiwihok v. Fairlife, LLC, № 2:25-cv-01650-ODW (AGRx), 2026
WL 413749 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 13, 2026)

“In 2014, Select Milk, a dairy cooperative, partnered with
Coca-Cola to launch Fairlife, a company with an eponymous line of premium milk
and milk products…. Fairlife promotes, and charges more for, high levels of
environmental sustainability and animal care.”

Fairlife bottles include the phrase “Recycle Me” on their
labels and are stamped with a recyclability arrow, and it claims that its farms
are “top in the industry for environmental sustainability.” Plaintiffs alleged
that 0% of Fairlife bottles are recyclable and that the sustainability
practices at Fairlife’s farms cause disproportionate environmental damage.

Fairlife also allegedly claims to follow industry-leading
animal care standards and to have zero tolerance for abusive practices at farms
supplying its milk, as represented by its logo:

But successive independent investigations have allegedly uncovered
“horrendous animal abuse” at farms supplying Fairlife’s milk, which I will not
recite but are indeed horrendous.

Plaintiffs alleged the usual
California claims.   

Although the court found that plaintiffs hadn’t plausibly
alleged enough Coca-Cola involvement to keep the parent company in, claims
against Fairlife survived. The only allegations with sufficient particularity
involved the Fairlife Logo and the recyclability claims on Fairlife’s bottle
label. Nor did plaintiffs successfully plead fraudulent omission. Courts have
required plaintiffs to “describe the content of the omission and where the
omitted information should or could have been revealed, as well as provide
representative samples of advertisements, offers, or other representations that
plaintiff relied on to make her purchase and that failed to include the
allegedly omitted information.” Although plaintiffs pled that Fairlife
“intentionally fail[ed] to disclose material information about the products,”
including that Fairlife’s products are derived from abused cows and that the
products’ packaging is not recyclable, they didn’t identify where this
information should or could have been revealed or which specific
“advertisements, offers, or other representations” omitted critical information.
Leave to amend granted if there was more.

Fairlife logo

Claims based on the logo survived as a plausible misrepresentation
of Fairlife’s animal care practices. “[B]rand names can be an especially
powerful source of misleading information,” even if the brand name itself is
not a recognized word. Combining the words “fair” and “life” together in a
brand name “may reasonably lead to the assumption that the subject of the brand
lives a ‘fair life.’” Superimposed on a cartoon picture of a cow, “the
implication becomes unmistakable: the cows are living a fair life. Thus, it is
well within reason for a consumer to believe that, based on the Fairlife logo,
the cows supplying Fairlife’s dairy products are living lives free from abuse.”

Fairlife argues that its logo was nonactionable puffery. But
the Fairlife brand name, “at bottom, suggests that the cows are living lives
free from abuse.” That was specific enough for a reasonable consumer to rely
on, especially in context of the cow image. “Taking as true at this pleading
stage the substantial evidence that shows Fairlife sources its dairy from cows
that live dreadful and appalling lives, it is plausible that Fairlife’s
labeling is misleading.” This may be an example of the line of cases that
refuses to find puffery when no reasonable person could agree that an otherwise
capacious term applied.

Recyclability claims on the bottle: Fairlife argued that California
provided a safe harbor provision through October 4, 2026. The FAL’s specific regulation
of recyclability claims specifically does not apply to “[a]ny product or
packaging that is manufactured up to 18 months after the date the department
publishes the first material characterization study required” by the law (or
before January 1, 2024 if that was later). “Read plainly, it appears that the
California Legislature intended to give companies eighteen months after
publication of a generally applicable material characterization study to comply
with recycling guidelines.” This occurred on April 4, 2024. This safe harbor provision
foreclosed the recyclability claims until later in the year. When “specific
legislation provides a ‘safe harbor,’ plaintiffs may not use the general unfair
competition law to assault that harbor.” Nor may they use express warranty
claims.

from Blogger http://tushnet.blogspot.com/2026/02/fairlife-brand-name-plausibly.html