Filippo Berio Consumers Receive Payout of 50 Cents Per Bottle to End Lawsuit

A group of con­sumers who claimed they were mis­led when buy­ing Filippo Berio olive oil that car­ried ​‘Imported From Italy’ labels asked a California fed­eral court this week to give ini­tial approval to a pre­lim­i­nary set­tle­ment with the brand’s importers, Salov North America Corp and Italfoods, Inc.

New-Jersey-based Filippo Berio is the third-largest olive oil brand in the United States, with sales of $137.4 mil­lion in 2015.
See Also:Salov North America Class Action
Under the terms of the pro­posal, the cer­ti­fied class mem­bers will receive a pay­out of just 50 cents for each bot­tle of olive oil they pur­chased, while the plain­tiff’s attor­neys may ask the court for up to $1 mil­lion in attor­neys fees from Filippo Berio, as stated in the pro­posed order.

On May 23, 2014 a 29-page law­suit was filed against Salov. The lead plain­tiff was a Californian woman, Rohini Kumar, who alleged that Salov com­mit­ted fraud by mak­ing mis­lead­ing claims that Filippo Berio olive oil was imported from Italy on the front of the label of the oil, while small print on the back of the label indi­cated that some olives were grown and pressed in other coun­tries (Tunisa, Greece and Spain).

According to the com­plaint, the ​“Imported from Italy” state­ment on the label was a clear vio­la­tion of the busi­ness prac­tices of the 1930 Tariff Act, 19 U.S.C. § 1304(a).

Kumar ini­ti­ated a class action suit against Salov in the Northern District Federal Court of California in July 2014. In the same class action suit, Kumar also argued that Salov com­mit­ted fraud by deceiv­ing cus­tomers into believ­ing the oil was extra vir­gin. It once may have been extra vir­gin, the com­plaint stated, but it would have degen­er­ated by the time it reached the con­sumer due to hav­ing been pack­aged in clear bot­tles that caused oxi­diza­tion when exposed to sun­light.

Next, Salov dis­missed Kumar’s claims by fil­ing a three­fold motion. The first claim that Kumar lacked stand­ing to bring the action was rejected by the Court on February 3, 2015. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers stated: ​“The pos­si­bil­ity of future injury is alleged suf­fi­ciently if the plain­tiff would encounter the same state­ments today and could not be any more con­fi­dent that they were true.”

Salov’s sec­ond claim that Kumar had no stand­ing to use the extra-vir­gin fraud claim because she failed to show injury in fact, was also rejected. The Judge decided that Kumar needed not ​“prove that the par­tic­u­lar bot­tle of oil she pur­chased had, in fact, degraded to the point of not being extra vir­gin,” and quoted Judge Seeborg in a sim­i­lar case: ​“Each con­sumer who pur­chases extra vir­gin olive oil is enti­tled to receive oil that meets that def­i­n­i­tion by design, not by hap­pen­stance.”

The Court went on to reject Salov’s third claim that Kumar lacked stand­ing because she bought only one prod­uct and brought claims against a wide array of prod­ucts. ​“This is a mat­ter to be con­sid­ered at the class cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stage, not the plead­ing stage,” ruled the Court.

Finally, the Court found ade­quate mis­con­duct specifics for the plead­ing stage, though it decided in Salov’s favor that there was no breach of con­tract and that Kumar’s claim of breach of covenant of good faith and fair deal­ing was insuf­fi­ciently pleaded.

Fast for­ward to January 2016, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers allowed Kumar to drop her claims per­tain­ing to the pro­duc­t’s sup­posed ​“extra vir­gin” qual­ity and, instead, to empha­size its ​‘Imported from Italy’ labels.

Two months later, how­ever, in a state­ment say­ing that Kumar lacked suf­fi­cient proof that she had even bought a bot­tle of Filippo Berio, Salov made a motion to dis­miss the class action law­suit, which was fol­lowed by a motion by the plain­tiff.

In the same motion, Salov stated both con­sumers and Kumar lacked evi­dence they had mis­in­ter­preted ​‘Imported from Italy’ to mean that the Filippo Berio olive oil was only made from Italian olives, as the dic­tio­nary defines ​“imported” as also ​“shipped out of.”

To back this claim, Salov pointed to a state­ment at the back of the olive oil bot­tles near the ​“best by” date, which was a dis­claimer reveal­ing that the olive oil orig­i­nated from dif­fer­ent coun­tries.

The Judge then said class mem­bers could sub­mit proof of pur­chase on a class action Claim Form Affidavit.

Salov also claimed Kumar’s hon­esty and cred­i­bil­ity were at stake due to her drunken dri­ving con­vic­tion and acquain­tance with an attor­ney from the firm rep­re­sent­ing her in this case.

Judge Gonzalez Rogers ruled that both the drunken dri­ving charges and her per­sonal friend­ship with an attor­ney were irrel­e­vant to the present case.

In the sum­mer of 2016, Judge Rogers even­tu­ally cer­ti­fied the Filippo Berio con­sumers who pur­chased olive oil of any grade between May 2010 and June 2015 (the Judge did not cer­tify a spe­cific organic vari­ety). Upon cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, the com­pany and class mem­bers took the suit to medi­a­tion, where they laid out the terms that would lead to set­tle­ments. These stated that the com­pany ought to remove ​‘Imported From Italy” from its labels and write just ​‘Imported,’ while Salov agreed not to use the ​‘Imported from Italy’ on its labels for a min­i­mum of three years.

So, for the time being, each mem­ber of the set­tle­ment class can sub­mit a claim for 50 cents per Filippo Berio prod­uct pur­chased, with a guar­an­teed min­i­mum of $2 worth of valid claims, whereas mem­bers must pro­duce proof of pur­chase for prod­ucts amount­ing to more than $5.

On the other hand, Kumar’s attor­neys may receive approx­i­mately $982,500 from Salov for attor­neys’ fees, in keep­ing with the pro­posed order.