In Buso v. ACH Food Companies, Inc., 2020 WL 1929024 (Apr. 20,
2020), the US District Court for the Southern District of
California dismissed a putative slack-fill class action against ACH
Food Companies because the packaging of its cornbread mix displayed
the product's net weight and gave consumers a "rough
estimate of cornbread that could be made from the product contained
within the box."
In his complaint, the plaintiff alleged that ACH violated
consumer protection laws barring deceptive and false advertising
because its opaque boxes contained 50% of
"non-functional" empty space that supposedly misled
consumers as to the amount of product in the boxes. ACH moved to
dismiss under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) on the ground that the
plaintiff could not plausibly allege a reasonable likelihood of
deception because the boxes accurately disclosed "the net
weight and yield of the mix on the packaging."
