A 小蓝视频 judge has rejected a proposed nation-wide class action lawsuit alleging a company sold various paint thinners at different price points when the contents were in fact identical.
Released Friday, the decision from 小蓝视频 Supreme Court Justice Joel Groves weighed arguments against Recochem Inc. that alleged the company engaged in deceptive marketing and made false representations to consumers.
To explain the allegations, judge Groves opened his decision leaning on a piece of television history.
“It is sometimes said that life imitates art,” the judge wrote.
“In terms of the art, and I am perhaps using this term in the broadest sense possible, there is a somewhat notorious episode of the television show called ‘The Simpsons’, in which the fatherly character, Homer Simpson is on a tour of a local brewery of the Duff Beer company, the apparent producer of his drink of choice.”
At one point during Homer’s tour, Grove explains, the audience sees a pipe “descending from on high, one pipe, which then distributes the beer flowing through that pipe into three large and different beer storage kegs.”
One keg is labelled Duff Lite, the other Duff, and the third Duff Dry, he continues. The clear implication: the same beer is being used to create the three differently labelled products.
“That is the essential allegation in this class action litigation,” wrote Grove.
So far, the company had not “significantly disputed” the allegations, which include claims the company breached Canada’s Competition Act, the judge wrote.
Led by Maciej Siwocha, the plaintiffs in the case essentially argued that the company was labelling its products as “good, better, best” with quality increasing as the price point went up.
The judge pointed to several of Recochem’s cleaning solvents, some marketed to degrease tools and auto parts, others to clean up after painting or to remove grease.
The chemical makeup of all the products appeared to be identical. But none of the marketing language on the packaging compared the one product with another, and none of the claims appeared to be false, ruled Grove.
Grove also was not convinced the proposed lawsuit was actionable because previous court rulings have upheld companies’ decisions to market brand-name drugs at higher prices than generic drugs, so long as they are not misleading consumers.
“Pricing is not a representation of quality — it is simply pricing,” he wrote.
The judge emphasized that he had “reluctantly” concluded the plaintiff's arguments did not reveal a cause for legal action, but that those pleadings may be amended to allow the class action certification to go ahead at a later date.
While seemingly legal, the idea that a company would make a “brazen attempt to maximize profit and to ‘pull the wool’ over the eyes of the ultimate consumer of their product” was at the least “morally concerning,” the judge added.
“I say this in part because the suggestion before me was that at one point in time all these products were different,” Grove concluded, “but a decision was made to simply do the legal equivalent to what the ‘Duff’ beer company did in the noted episode of the Simpsons…”
This isn't the first time a 小蓝视频 judge has leaned on popular culture in a class action certification hearing. In 2021, 小蓝视频 Supreme Court Justice Ward Branch referenced a Monty Python “dead parrot” sketch in his ruling.
Initially reported by C小蓝视频, within hours the references had been .
