Nathan A Adams IV is a Partner in Holland &
Knight's
Tallahassee office
In Johnson v. Atkins Nutritionals, Inc., No.
2:16-cv-04213, 2018 WL 3398162 (W.D. Mo. July 12, 2018), the
plaintiff sued the defendant on various theories for alleged
deceptive labels, but during deposition he testified that he
remembered seeing, but not reading the "Counting Carbs?"
label. When asked whether the label was important to his purchasing
decision, the plaintiff testified that his then-wife "would
direct him to purchase certain things that they wanted" as
part of a no-carb to low-carb diet plan to cut sugar and lose
weight. The defendant argued that an element of a claim under the
Missouri Merchandising Practices Act (MMPA) must be reliance on the
alleged false label. The defendant argued the label must at least
be material to the consumer's purchasing decision. The court
disagreed that reliance or materiality were necessary elements of
the MMPA claim any more than that the
