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Nature Valley granola barsUPDATE 6/4/13: A federal judge sided with General Mills and dismissed the Minnesota Nature Valley Granola Bar Class Action Lawsuit on May 31, 2013. The California case is still alive.

UPDATE 2: On Nov. 7, 2014, General Mills reportedly agreed to settle four Nature Valley class action lawsuits and will no longer include the allegedly misleading “natural” labels on its products.

General Mills filed a motion to dismiss a class action lawsuit accusing the company of falsely advertising that its Nature Valley granola bars are “100% Natural,” saying the crux of the plaintiffs’ claims are based on “junk science.”

Plaintiffs Tracie Chin and Salvatore Montalbano sued General Mills in August 2012 for deceptively advertising its Nature Valley line of granola bars as all-natural, saying the products are highly processed and contain sugar substitutes such as high fructose corn syrup and high maltose corn syrup, as well as the texturizer maltodextrin.

The complaint was filed about a month after a similar Nature Valley false advertising class action lawsuit was filed by two California mothers over the same allegations.

General Mills is attempting to strike down Chin and Montalbano’s class action lawsuit against the company, claiming:

“Plaintiffs’ theory of liability is premised on their distinction between processed and highly processed corn. Cornstarch is itself processed. It does not grow out of the ground, but is created through the process of milling. But milling, in Plaintiffs’ view, does not produce a ‘non-natural’ ingredient. It is the additional step of treating the cornstarch with enzymes that Plaintiffs assert crosses the threshold from processed to ‘highly processed,’ and from natural to non-natural. The Complaint does not cite any scientific authority for this distinction.”

General Mills also pointed to the fact that despite labeling the Nature Valley granola bars as “100% Natural” on the front of the box, the ingredient list clearly lists all of the offending ingredients for consumers to see. Finally, the company asserts the class action lawsuit should be dismissed on the grounds that the plaintiffs cannot sue for products they never purchased.

No decision on the motion to dismiss has been made yet.

Chin and Montalbano are seeking to represent a proposed nationwide class of consumers that purchased Nature Valley products as well as a subclass of New York and New Jersey buyers. It is seeking restitution; compensatory, treble and punitive damages; injunctive relief and more.

The General Mills Nature Valley False Advertising Class Action Lawsuit case is Chin, et al. v. General Mills Inc., Case No. 12-cv-02150, U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.

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5 thoughts onGeneral Mills Moves to Dismiss Nature Valley Class Action Lawsuit

  1. Top Class Actions says:

    UPDATE: On Nov. 7, 2014, General Mills reportedly agreed to settle four Nature Valley class action lawsuits and will no longer include the allegedly misleading “natural” labels on its products.

  2. rufus brown says:

    we have some of these now, and we been buying them for several years.

  3. Jay says:

    How do I file a claim to be part of this clas action lawsuit?

  4. Anonymous says:

    What they should be sued for is having Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) in all their so called “natural” products. All the corn derived products are GE unless certified organic. GMOs are made in a lab, have huge health risks and are by no means natural.

  5. Anonymous says:

    And then we wonder why costs are so high. Medical costs have skyrocketed as a result of so many lawsuits, as have food costs. These type of suits are nothing but frivolous and money-making enterprises. Just about every food product around, unless purchased from an organic farmers market, have been processed making the food product instantly un-natural! An apple is natural. Bottled applesauce is not, it’s been processed and treated with a preservative and, even if that preservative is natural itself, the end product is un-natural and processed, even though all it has are natural ingredients. These women are splitting hairs and trying to make a buck from a product they never even purchased. It’s truly sad.

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