It's not always about the consumer

Last week in New Jersey Superior Court (in Atlantic County, no less) a NJ woman, Lauren Coyle, filed a class action lawsuit against AriZona Iced Tea and its parent companies alleging that they are illegally marketing their product as "100% natural" when in fact the product contains high fructose corn syrup.  She is seeking damages for herself and everyone in NJ who purchased an AriZona iced tea in the past six years.

What, specifically, is she seeking? Aside from attorney's fees (bingo) and a court order preventing AriZona from marketing its product as "100% natural," she is seeking to be reimbursed for the difference between a premium, i.e. "100% natural," beverage and an ordinary one. What is that, about 25 cents?

As with many class action suits brought under the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act (CFA), the only people who will benefit from this suit are the lawyers, who will run up enormous fees in discovery and trial costs. The average consumer who is alleged to have been defrauded will see little, if any compensation.

The CFA was designed to allow individual consumers who have been defrauded by a business or sold a defective or harmful product to seek compensation. The fact that Ms. Coyle and her lawyers think that they can benefit from this suit exposes just how far our law and our courts have strayed from these ideas. Ms. Coyle could have simply turned the bottle around, read the ingredients and found high fructose corn syrup among them, and returned her iced tea to the store. Or she could have asked the company for her money back. Instead, consumers who have truly been harmed will now wait in line behind Ms. Coyle and the millions of people who purchased AriZona Iced Tea during the past six years while the court sorts this out.

Her lawyers now stand to make a lot of money. Ms. Coyle, barring punitive damages, might take home tens of dollars. The rest of us will get a coupon.