After Second Try, House Passes Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 (HR 2749)
U.S. House of Representatives approved HR 2749 moments ago. This action followed some confusion yesterday where it was brought to the floor needing a 2/3 vote and failed. Here’s a link to a report by the Rules Committee including the language of the bill as approved today by the House. Changes to the bill from what was proposed by the Energy and Commerce Committee include amendments aimed at concerns by smaller farmers of the $500 “facility registration fee,” performance standards and record keeping.
The legislation has been the subject of heavy debate inside and outside the beltway. Here’s a link to the Editorial in the New York Times in support of the bill. The Grocery Manufacturer’s Association (GMA) also has expressed support in a June press release for the bill as marked-up by the Energy and Commerce Committee. From some opposed to the bill, here’s a link with an impassioned argument from yesterday.
Note that the registration requirements in the bill as currently written “does not include farms; private residences of individuals, restaurants, other retail food establishments; nonprofit food establishments in which food is prepared for or served directly to the consumer.”
The bill further exempts from registration farms that sell food primarily at farmers markets. Also exempts farms that “manufacturer grains or other feed stuffs” grown on those farms and distributed to other farms for “consumption as food by humans or animals on such farm.”
Also note that traceability provisions remain. Section 107(c)(2) recognizes that work remains on the regulatory level for FDA to collect information, and develop technology and systems, and establish pilot programs before traceability becomes a reality.
Preventing "Piercing of The Veil" - Practical Tips For Food Companies - What to Do and What to Avoid (part III of III)
By guest blogger Jerry Chiang
The following list will help you preserve your liability shield and protect yourself from the liabilities of your corporation or limited liability company (“LLC”). This is not intended to be an exhaustive list but rather an illustrative list of activities that will either preserve one’s liability shield or undermine it.
Do’s:
• Properly capitalize the corporation/LLC, or in the alternative, obtain sufficient insurance to cover potential liabilities.
• Keep personal and business entity funds separate by creating a bank account for business entity funds and transactions.
• Hold oneself out as an officer or employee of the corporation/LLC.
• In transacting with third parties, make it clear that they are transacting with a corporation or LLC and not an individual.
• As a corporation, observe all formalities listed in your state’s corporation statute and the corporation’s bylaws. To learn more about Washington corporate formalities, visit the Washington Business Corporation Act.
• As an LLC, observe all formalities listed in your state’s LLC statute and the LLC’s operating agreement. To learn more about Washington LLC formalities, visit the Washington Limited Liability Company Act.
Don’ts:
• Avoid paying excessive dividends or distributions.
• Avoid below-market sale of assets to a shareholder, member or a third party.
• Avoid using business entity assets for personal purposes and vice versa.
Preventing "Piercing of The Veil" - Practical Tips For Food Companies - Factors Courts Review for Veil Piercing (part II of III)
By guest blogger Jerry Chiang
When courts decide whether to pierce the corporate veil, their analysis is typically a three-step process: (1) whether the defendant-owner exerts sufficient control over the business entity, (2) whether there has been an abuse of corporate form, and (3) whether there is an injury to a third party.
There is no exact percentage of control or ownership that courts require for liability. This is a threshold question the plaintiffs have to answer satisfactorily before courts will consider the abuse of corporate form question.
Abuse of corporate form can come in many shapes, but the following are some of the common examples. Although some of these descriptions are based on corporations, the concepts apply equally to limited liability companies.
• Undercapitalization – This refers to a defendant-owner’s failure to endow the corporation or limited liability company, typically in the beginning stages, with sufficient, unencumbered capital to meet foreseeable business liabilities.
• Milking - Common practices of milking include paying excessive dividends, selling company assets to shareholders or third parties at reduced prices, paying unreasonable management fees, and diverting corporate funds to personal use.
• Commingling - Commingling typically occurs where the shareholder keeps one bank account for both personal and corporate funds. It is also typical to see a shareholder using the corporation’s assets for the shareholder’s personal purposes and other businesses without proper documentation.
• Misrepresentation/Holding Out – This describes a shareholder who represents to third parties that they are dealing with an individual, rather than a corporation.
• Failure to Observe Corporate Formalities – Examples of failing to observe corporate formalities include failure to (1) appoint the required number of officers, (2) issue stock, (3) file tax returns, (4) hold annual shareholders and board of directors meetings, (5) keep a minute book, (6) act through resolutions and (7) create a corporate bank account. Here is a useful discussion of LLC formalities.
If a defendant-owner has committed one or more of the above, a court is likely to find abuse of corporate form.
Once the first two prongs are met, courts determine whether the corporate form should be disregarded in order to prevent fraud or injury to a third party. In other words, there must be a causal relationship between the abuse of corporate form by the defendant-owner and the injury of the plaintiff seeking to pierce the corporate veil.
Bottled Water Association Sues Over Water Bottle Ads
The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) is taking aim at an advertising campaign for Eco Canteen stainless steel water bottles, claiming the ads wrongly suggest that plastic water bottles are unhealthy and unsafe.
In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, IBWA claims that Eco Canteen’s television ads and content on various Eco Canteen websites deceive the public into believing that single-serve and reusable plastic water bottles constitute a safety and health risk to consumers. Among other things, IBWA’s lawsuit alleges that some of Eco Canteen’s ads have:
- Improperly linked plastic water bottles to breast and prostate cancer and stated that plastic water bottles “could be poisoning you and your family”;
- Matched images of single-serve plastic water bottles with Eco Canteen’s claims “relating to an organic compound called Bisphenol A (BPA) with the intent to confuse consumers into believing that single-serve bottles also contain BPA even though they do not”;
- Conveyed false and misleading information regarding the alleged health risks of BPA; and
- Suggested that exposing certain water bottles to warm temperatures can lead to leaching of chemicals.
IBWA brings two claims against Eco Canteen: (i) a false advertising claim under the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125; and (ii) an unfair competition claim under North Carolina law. A copy of the complaint (including exhibits showing some of the Eco Canteen ads about which IBWA complains) is available here.
Preventing "Piercing of The Veil" - Practical Tips For Food Companies - Introduction (part I of III)
By guest blogger Jerry Chiang
In starting any business enterprise, especially in the food industry, incorporating the business as a corporation or limited liability company is as important as having a good product or solid business plan. Incorporation is essential because it shields owners from the liabilities of their business. A lawsuit against the business will not impact the personal assets of the business owners because the law recognizes the corporation or limited liability company as a distinct and separate entity.
Incorporation by itself, however, is not enough. In order for the liability shield to remain in place, or for the law to continue to recognize the corporation or limited liability company as a separate entity, the entity’s owners need to observe certain formalities. If the owners are not careful, the law may treat the entity and the owners as one and the same and disregard the corporate entity. This is commonly referred to as “piercing the corporate veil.”
Over the next few days, this blog will give you an overview of what the courts look at when they decide whether to disregard a business entity and find its owners liable. We’ll also provide a list of dos and don’ts to help you avoid losing your liability shield.
For more in-depth discussion of the latest case developments on piercing the corporate veil, especially as it relates to LLCs, keep up with Doug Batey's blog, LLC Monitor.
Settlements and Implied Warranties
Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code contains powerful tools for buyers and sellers of food and other goods. A recent case out of the Georgia Supreme Court emphasizes the critical gatekeeper function of the scope section of Article 2, Section 2-102. This section provides:
Unless the context otherwise requires, this Article applies to transactions in goods; it does not apply to any transaction which although in the form of an unconditional contract to sell or present sale is intended to operate only as a security transaction nor does this Article impair or repeal any statute regulating sales to consumers, farmers or other specified classes of buyers.
Prior case law has generally distinguished between contracts whose primary purpose is the sale of goods or services. For instance, when you deal with a roofing contractor, are you buying the shingles or the installation services?
In Olé Mexican Foods, Inc. v. Hanson Staple Co. (Ga. April 28, 2009), the parties disputed whether certain packaging had met contract specifications. Without lawyers present, they negoiated a handwritten settlement agreement. The agreement included a provision whereby the buyer
would “purchase a minimum of $130,000 worth of current inventory from” [seller] and would “test the remainder of inventory and ... purchase additional inventory if it meets quality expectations.”
On a motion to enforce the settlement agreement, buyer got the court to agree that "that such purchases would “be governed by the Georgia Uniform Commercial Code [UCC], and [buyer] shall retain the right to reject [seller's product pursuant to the Georgia [UCC].”
The Georgia Court of Appeals reversed and the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the intermediate appellate court's decision. The reasoning was that the purpose of the settlement agreement was not the sale of goods, but the settlement of a dispute over the sale of goods.
The fact that the document at issue is labeled “agreement reached in settlement” “is a good barometer of the parties’ intentions. Though the label that contracting parties affix to an agreement is not necessarily determinative of the agreement’s predominant purpose, it can constitute potent evidence of that purpose.”
Citing a number of cases, the court held that where the purpose was settlement, it would be wrong to treat the case instead as a sale of goods, bringing in the implied warranties that the language of the parties' settlement indicated should not apply to the mandatory purchase of goods pursuant to the settlement.
As a UCC matter, the case is undoubtedly correct. Kristen David Adams, a professor at Stetson Law School and one of the few others who possess the cap that illustrates this entry, has written:
one reason why the court’s holding is so clearly correct is that a contrary holding would essentially eviscerate the purpose of this particular settlement: since one of the central disputes in the underlying litigation was whether Hanson’s goods were merchantable within the meaning of the Uniform Commercial Code, and since the case was settled rather than having this issue decided by the court, applying the implied warranty of merchantability to the settlement agreement would almost certainly require the parties to relitigate the question of merchantability.
When settling a case involving goods that are alleged not to conform to the contract, then, it is often the case that the terms of the settlement might involve future shipments. It is therefore critical to recognize that the question of whether implied warranties and other Article 2 default terms should be addressed by the parties directly in the contract, and not left for later interpretation by a court. In this case, the parties settled without the benefit of counsel, and it is not inconceivable that each had a different take on whether the default warranties would apply. It is also conceivable that neither gave the question a moment's thought until their respective lawyers looked over their handiwork
Which is another reason to have the advice of counsel when settling a case.
Video From Governor's Conference on Ensuring Food Safety
University of Nebraska has posted video on its website from the entire three days of the 2009 Governor’s Conference on Ensuring Food Safety. You can view my presentation on Defending Liability in Foodborne Illness Outbreaks. More important, you view the presentations of Dr. Andrew Benson and the other scientists who offer fascinating insights into the latest developments driving the science of food safety.
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Assessing Risks of Chemicals in Foods with Limited Scientific Information
An important study was released this month by the Institute of Food Technologists addressing the challenge of responding to food contamination with limited scientific information. Ricardo Carvajal at Hyman, Phelps & McNamara wrote about this on the FDALawBlog last week. You can read the summary by Rosetta L. Newsome here.
Ms. Newsome summarizes the three main sections of the study as follows:
First Section:
“details the U.S. legal framework that provides the foundation for U.S. food safety policy,
describes international considerations (e.g., Codex standards) that impact foods in international commerce, and addresses European Union law and standards.”
Second Section:
“briefly addresses structure activity relationships, surrogate compounds and metabolites,
predictions based on physical/chemical data, toxicological evaluation, use of animal studies, statistical considerations, and other aspects of risk assessment.”
Third Section:
“addresses why a new approach is needed to conduct a risk-based evaluation of the potential exposure, hazard, and toxicity of low levels of unwanted chemical substances in foods and how information on risk can be used to make appropriately conservative and balanced decisions[;] . . . also calls attention to the importance of evaluating benefits of the food(s) in which the component is found as well as risks.”
2010 Food Safety Education Conference Announced
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has announced the 2010 Food Safety Education Conference. The conference will be held in Atlanta from March 23 through 26, 2010. Although the agenda is still a work in progress, you can expect sessions on foodborne illnesses, outreach to the medical community, food safety education initiatives, social marketing, and emerging industry trends and technologies.
The conference is accepting abstracts on food safety-related topics through August 16, 2009. More information on the conference and the abstract submission process is available through the links on the widget below.
UK Hails the Return of the Nobbly Carrot and the Bendy Cucumber
Last fall, the British grocery chain J Sainsbury sought to introduce a "Halloween" range of fruits and vegetables in its stores. Included would be ‘Witches fingers' - carrots with more than one finger, ‘Zombies brains' - undersized cauliflowers and ‘Ogres toenails' - bendy cucumbers amongst others. While selling such vegetables for Halloween decoration might have been a good idea, Sainburys had a different agenda, a "Save Our Ugly Fruit and Veg" campaign to highlight some of the European Commission's most mocked regulations, those requiring that all fruits and vegetables in 36 categories meet marketing standards in order to be sold anywhere in the European Union.
As of July 1, the regulations have been rescinded as to 26 of the 36 categories. And so, at least in some countries, the nobbly carrot and the bendy cucumber are back on store shelves. If anyone wants to buy them.
Ostensibly, the repeal of these regulations was made to cut red tape and to reduce waste of edible food in harsh economic times. But others have a different take on what the effect of the repeal of these regulations will be.
Continue Reading...
Tort Damages Not the Only Exposure from Food-Borne Illness Outbreaks
For lawyers and insurance adjustors, compartmentalizing food-borne illness claims is easy. They often see their jobs solely as minimizing the tort liability and legal fees. In my experience, attorneys and adjustors often fail to appreciate how outbreaks can affect a client’s (or even a whole industry’s) business going forward. Often, the long-term business losses of a food-borne illness outbreak, recall, or government alert are not insured.
There is no better example of how a nationally reported food-borne illness outbreak can affect an entire industry (or even an entire category of food products) than the 2006 E. coli spinach outbreak. Two new studies published by the Agriculture & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) in its Choices magazine analyze consumer information and studies in the wake of the spinach outbreak.
Among the highlights from the first study, “Public Response to Large-Scale Produce Contamination” by Carra Cuite and William K. Hallman, were findings that Americans were more aware of advisories beginning than ending. For example, 87% of spinach consumers knew about the outbreak, but more than six weeks after the FDA had lifted its spinach warnings “almost half (45%) of people who were aware of the spinach recall were not confident that the recall had ended.”
A second study entitled “E. coli Outbreaks Affect Demand for Salad Vegetables” was authored by Faysal Fahs, Ron C. Mittelhammer, and Jill J. McCluskey. It examines the cumulative effects that sequential outbreaks can have on consumer demand and concludes that “the empirical results suggest that the subsequent outbreaks had a greater impact on the consumption of salad vegetables than the first.”
For food companies the lesson is this:
A lawyer’s role in responding to a food product crisis is important. But the roles of others, such as public relations experts, may be as important or more important in preserving the business. Make sure your lawyer (and your insurer) understands that the world may not revolve around simply resolving the tort claims as economically as possible.
The Fuller Monty and Lady Godiva: More on the Plainview Problem
As I predicted last week, more and more companies are discovering that they had incorporated products from Plainview Milk Products Cooperative into what they sold. The full FDA database, which is constantly being updated, is here.
While there have now been recalls of products as widely different as frosting and diet mixes, I was most struck by Godiva's recall. As others have noted, as of the time of this post this doesn't appear anywhere in the Godiva website, either.
Godiva's recall related to a special collection that was available only for Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. The "consume by" date for the Valentine's Day candy has passed and the "consume by" date for the Mother's Day collection has nearly passed. Exactly one candy in the box, a praline crunch, included product from Plainview. No one has complained of any symptoms from eating this candy. So, if you, your mom, your grandma, your spouse or your sweetheart (a) got this box for Valentine's Day or Mother's Day, (b) haven't finished it yet, even though it has a short "consume by" window that has more likely passed; and (c) didn't eat that praline crunch, then you are supposed to discard the product and call 1-800-9GODIVA for a refund.
The Godiva recall is being taken as a superabundance of caution, given the unlikelihood anyone meets all those criteria. However, it does indicate that not all Plainview products were shelf-stable. This may go on for awhile.
Monty Python and the Food Recalls
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One of Monty Python's most imitated sketches was "The Four Yorkshiremen." Even if you've never seen it, it will be instantly recognizable to you. It's the one where four men sit around talking about how tough they had it as kids, compared to how kids have it today. One starts by complaining about how small his house was, and another exclaims, "You had a house?" Eventually, the last one claims to have been roused from bed half an hour before he went to bed, worked 27 hours a day and paid for the privilege and then was murdered every night when he got home.
I was thinking about this sketch as I was contemplating how different from the last food recall about which I blogged, involving tuna in New England, was from the painfully slow recalls involving the salmonella finding that has led Plainview Milk Products Cooperative to recall the last two years of its products. As you might recall, the last recall involved fresh tuna steaks sold to three New England supermarket chains over four days before the problems were identified. By this time, most of the food subject to the recall had probably been consumed and the recall required only publicity in a limited area for those who might have frozen the steaks rather than eaten them fresh. Without denying the difficulties that North Coast Sea-Foods might have encountered in that recall, or the suffering of anyone who got scombroid poisoning, as a recall goes, they, in the words of Monty Python, had it easy.
The Plainview Milk Products Cooperative and everyone who bought from them, on the other hand, have it anything but easy, and the fact that almost every day new products are added to the recalled list demonstrates this.
Continue Reading...Future of Food Litigation and Obama's Food Safety Working Group
President Obama’s Food Safety Working Group announced its Key Findings on July 7. Three groups of initiatives were announced: 1) Salmonella, 2) National Traceback and Response System, and 3) Improved Organization of Federal Food Safety Responsibilities. All of these represent major shifts in food policy. Coming changes will impact nearly every part of the nation’s food supply.
Despite Obama’s stepped-up food safety agenda, the question of how these changes will affect food-borne illness litigation remains. Bill Marler in a recent blog post reacting to the July 7 Key Findings says, “I really may live to see the government ‘put me out of business.’” No doubt that many of Obama’s initiatives will improve food safety. But will it eliminate food-borne illness and accompanying litigation? Not likely.
Many food companies today follow food safety precautions that exceed anything proposed by the Obama administration or Congress. Yet those same companies continue to experience food-borne illness outbreaks and are targets of the plaintiffs’ bar. E. coli, Salmonella, and other pathogens are persistent in the environment and successful at Darwinian evolution. In some sense, the pathogens that are the source of food-borne illness always seem at least one step ahead of the law.
Crystal ball: Obama’s initiatives will lead to a safer food supply but will also help the government detect more outbreaks that previously went undetected. Undetected outbreaks rarely lead to litigation; detected outbreaks almost always lead to litigation. Growth in food-borne illness litigation, therefore, should continue to accelerate.
ACI Announces 3rd National Forum on Food-Borne Illness Litigation
The American Conference Institute announced this week its latest food litigation conference. Here’s the conference brochure. The conference will take place in Chicago on October 26-27 at the Sutton Place Hotel.
Plaintiffs’ lawyer Bill Marler and defense lawyer Al Maxwell are co-chairing the conference. This year promises a greater variety of presentations by in-house food personnel, government regulators, and others. As in past years, I expect a stimulating exchange of information and vigorous debate about competing views of food liability issues. Feel free to email me or comment if you are attending or want more information.
HFCS Labeling Case: Opening The Floodgates For New Consumer Claims?
The Third Circuit may be close to opening the floodgates of claims against food and beverage manufacturers who use high-fructose corn syrup (“HFCS”) in products labeled “all natural.” Shannon Duffy at the Legal Intelligencer reported recently on a “lively hour-long” oral argument in the Third Circuit about reversing a District Court’s dismissal of state consumer claims against Snapple for use of HFSC.
The District Court dismissed the consumer claims in 2007 on the basis of field preemption. The dismissal predated the Third Circuit’s decision in Fellner v. Tri-Union Seafood, LLC. See our previous blog on the Fellner case. Despite the FDA’s position in Fellner that a state law failure-to-warn claim is preempted by federal law, the Third Circuit ruled to the contrary.
In Fellner, a claim by a person who suffered from mercury poisoning after eating canned tuna literally for breakfast, lunch and dinner for five years may have been an outlier. But reversal of the District Court’s decision in the Snapple case will open the floodgates to consumer class action claims against a whole slew of food sellers and manufacturers.
Another Recall From a Company That Does the Right Thing
The FDA announced a recall of fresh tuna steaks distributed to Shaw's, Star Market and Big Y grocery stores by North Coast Sea-Foods Corp. of Boston and New Bedford. The alleged problem was increased levels of histamine that might cause scombroid poisoning. The tuna was removed from sale on June 24, but consumers who might have frozen the steaks were told to return them to the stores for a full refund. We again assume that North Coast (and its insurers) will be funding the refunds.
What made me write about this recall was a rather silly poll in DailyKos. The question was whether the increase in recalls was due to the food supply becoming less safe or that the FDA was getting better. Like many online polls, this so oversimplified the situation that I thought I should write about it, and the North Coast tuna recall seemed as good a vehicle as any.
The three reported cases of scombroid poisoning associated with this tuna would presumably have been reported to local public health officials in New England, not the FDA. Or they might have been reported to the markets, which in turn would have easily been able to identify the source of the tuna and reported to North Coast (scombroid poisoning occurs almost immediately, so there isn't the usual problem of figuring out what food might have caused a delayed reaction). Both the markets and North Coast will have significant food safety programs. Some of this will be the result of government action, and some of it the result of simply caring about their customers. There is no indication that this outbreak was the result of anyone's inattention or failure.
It took me awhile to identify that I had the right North Coast Sea-Foods Corp., because their name is spelled differently in the release. In doing my research, I discovered some nice things about them, such as that they had argued strenuously against a Department of Defense initiative to buy cheaper, and potentially more hazardous fish for our troops, on the grounds of food safety. Another thing I learned was that they had installed solar power at their Boston facility, and considered wind power at their New Bedford facility. We at Stoel are not just committed to renewable energy, we literally wrote the book on it. So, similar to the Fat Duck and Nestle, even those committed to doing the right thing can sometimes be the subject of a food recall.
Why Are Food-borne Organisms Associated with Beef?
USDA’s Be Food Safe Twitter Feed circulated its Fact Sheet titled “Beef . . . from Farm to Table.” First published a few years ago, this might be of interest to businesses involved in the sale, marketing, labeling, and/or packaging of beef. The article is a helpful primer on the history of beef, current industry practices, USDA’s role in inspection, consumer trends, cooking times, storage times, and food-borne illnesses associated with beef.
Captain Crunch Suit Dismissed: Court Finds No "Actual Fruit Referred to as Crunchberry"
Yes, someone has actually filed a putative class action on the basis that she was “mislead by the packaging and marketing, which she argues convey the message that the Product contains real, nutritious fruit.” U.S. District Judge England in the Eastern District of California dismissed the complaint captioned as Sugawara v. Pepsico, Inc.
Though Sugawara seems purely frivolous, the claim follows predictably from the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Williams v. Gerber discussed previously on this blog. In Williams, the Ninth Circuit reinstated a putative class action that alleged labeling on “fruit juice snacks” (1) constituted misrepresentation and breach of warranty under California common law and (2) violated California’s statutes on unfair competition and consumer law. The district court had granted a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), finding that statements on the label “were not likely to deceive a reasonable consumer, particularly given that the ingredient list was printed on the side of the box.”
Judge England distinguished Sugawara from Williams, writing that
while the challenged packaging contains the word “berries” it does so only in
conjunction with the descriptive term “crunch.” This Court is not aware of, nor has Plaintiff alleged the existence of, any actual fruit referred to as a “crunchberry.” Furthermore, the “Crunchberries” depicted on the PDP are round, crunchy, brightly- colored cereal balls, and the PDP clearly states both that the Product contains “sweetened corn & oat cereal” and that the cereal is “enlarged to show texture.” Thus, a reasonable consumer would not be deceived into believing that the Product in the instant case contained a fruit that does not exist.
Even lawsuits as unmerited as alleging that consumers believe Crunchberries grow on trees are expensive to deal with. As we said following the Williams decision, the sad state of affairs is that the only way manufacturers can mitigate against these types of putative class actions is to directly involve lawyers in the marketing and labeling process.
