“In an epic takedown of a ruling issued Friday, a federal judge tossed a fraud lawsuit against Starbucks, dismissing claims that the coffee chain was defrauding customers by using a misleading amount of ice in their cold (i.e. iced) beverages.” [Julia Wick, LAist, earlier] More: ABA Journal (similar actions had been filed in L.A., Chicago, Starbucks moving to dismiss Chicago suitas well).
Posts Tagged ‘Starbucks’
Class action: too much ice in Starbucks iced drinks
“A consumer class claims Starbucks’ cold drinks are almost half ice and the coffee chain misrepresents the fluid ounces of its popular, and profitable, iced coffee and tea beverages….Further, Starbucks charges more for cold drinks than for comparable hot drinks, despite giving cold-drink customers less of the product than hot-drink customers; in this way, Starbucks makes higher profits off its cold beverages, Pincus claims.” [Jack Bouboushian, Courthouse News Service] “The customer is seeking $5 million in damages. ‘Our customers understand and expect that ice is an essential component of any “iced” beverage,’ Starbucks said in a response. It added that the company will happily remake any beverage until the customer is satisfied.” [Lindsay Putnam, New York Post] Another class action a few weeks ago claimed that the coffee chain does not fill hot drinks up close enough to the top of the cup.
More: “Dear plaintiffs: put your too-hot McDonalds coffee in your too-icy Starbucks coffee. Problem solved.” [David Burge]
Class action: too much air in that Starbucks latte cup
Coffee giant Starbucks is said to use too low a “fill-to” line in latte cups and a class action filed in federal court in California wants money over that [Nation’s Restaurant News via Ira Stoll, Future of Capitalism]
More, Nick Farr/Abnormal Use:
Regardless of the merits of the short-pouring allegations, one particular allegation in the suit gave us pause. The plaintiffs allege that “Starbucks refuses to fill any hot beverage to the brim of the cup. Thus, under no circumstances will Starbucks ever serve a Grande Latte that actually meets the fluid ounces represented on the menu.” If we read that correctly, it sounds like the plaintiffs are actually suggesting that hot coffee should be filled to the brim of the cup to ensure that they are getting the full bang for their buck. We are guessing that had Starbucks done so, there would be a whole other class of plaintiffs clamoring for some massive hot coffee burn litigation. Maybe the plaintiffs should demand Starbucks use bigger cups and let the not filling to the brim policy stand for those who value safety.
NLRB: law protects employee’s right to curse out boss
In not just one recent case, but two:
* “During a meeting about commissions, minimum wage, and employee breaks [at a Yuma, Ariz. car dealership], an employee lost his temper, angrily calling his supervisors words such as [obscenities omitted]. He also stood up, shoved his chair aside, and told them they would regret it if they fired him. Unsurprisingly, that tirade resulted in the employee’s termination. Astoundingly, in Plaza Auto Center (5/28/14), the NLRB concluded that the termination was an unlawful violation of the employee’s rights to engage in the protected concerted activity.” [Jon Hyman, Ohio Employer’s Law Blog; Brennan Bolt, Labor Relations Today]
* “Starbucks cannot fire a union activist employee who cursed at a manager in front of customers, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled for the second time. Joseph Agins was active in trying to unionize four Manhattan Starbucks coffee shops between 2004 and 2007.” His repeated imprecations, sometimes in the presence of customers, included “this is [BS],” “do everything your damn self,” “about damn time” when the manager arrived to help, and “go … yourself”. A protected pattern of behavior under federal labor law, the NLRB ruled. “The board ordered Starbucks to offer Agins his old job or a substantially equivalent position, compensate him for any loss of earnings and other benefits, and remove from its files any references to the unlawful firing.” [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
Compare the separately developed field of “hostile-environment” law, in which the employer may be held liable for years’ worth of back pay if it does not separate from the workplace an employee who repeatedly confronts a co-worker with belligerent and profane abuse (& Scott Greenfield).
Claim: Starbucks tip jars too tempting to thieves
Crestwood, Mo.: “The Starbucks coffee shop here should have known it was inviting trouble by placing a tip jar on an open counter, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the estate of a customer who died defending it.” Customer Roger Kreutz saw a teenager grab the jar and gave chase on foot; he was killed when the miscreant backed his car over him. Kreutz’s estate has now filed a suit alleging “that Starbucks ‘did not employ security to prevent the perpetration of such crimes’ and that it ‘invited the act of perpetration of said crime’ by having a tip jar.” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
2nd Circuit: Starbucks not liable in “double-cup” hot-tea suit
“A Manhattan woman has failed to persuade a U.S. appeals court that Starbucks Corp should be held liable for severe burns she suffered after spilling tea served in a double cup.” [NY Daily News]
Yes, tea is hot, too. (Redux: Villona Maryash edition)
Brooklyn mother Villona Maryash spills tea on her five-month-old infant, infant burned, sues Starbucks. But the complaint is not that the beverage was too hot, but that Starbucks should’ve served it on a tray and with a sleeve. Of course, protective sleeves are in ready reach of customers at every Starbucks I’ve been in, and it’s likely that Starbucks doesn’t insert the cups in sleeves automatically for environmental reasons. [NY Post; Gothamist commenters are not impressed]
Yes, tea is hot, too: Zeynep Inanli v. Starbucks
By popular demand, we note the existence of the case of Zeynep Inanli v. Starbucks Corp et al, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 105767-2010, where Ms. Inanli has alleged second-degree burns from tea that was “unreasonably hot, in containers which were not safe.”
You will recall that part of the trial lawyer defense of the McDonald’s hot coffee case are the factually false claims that (1) only McDonald’s sold beverages hot enough to cause burns and (2) after Stella Liebeck won her suit, hot-beverage vendors everywhere reduced their temperatures to a “safe” level. Of course, the Reuters account fails to indicate sufficient facts to determine whether Ms. Inanli’s scenario reflects injuries from a spill that was her own fault or the fault of Starbucks.
Starbucks barista tips: appeals court reverses $86 million award
It does not violate the law for shift supervisors to share in the tip jar, ruled a California court of appeal [Central California Business Times; earlier at Point of Law]
Starbucks job-application suit fails
Starbucks’s job application asked prospective baristas if they’d been convicted of a crime in the past seven years and added for “CALIFORNIA APPLICANTS ONLY”, at the end, that minor marijuana possession convictions more than two years old didn’t have to be disclosed, in accord with a state law along those lines. Entrepreneurial lawyers then tried to steam-press $26 million or so out of the coffee chain on the following theory: that the clarification was placed too far down the application after the original question; that Starbucks had therefore violated the California Labor Code; and that each and every Starbucks job applicant in California since June 2004, perhaps 135,000 persons, was owed $200 in statutory damages regardless of whether they had suffered any harm. Per John Sullivan of the Civil Justice Association of California, the lawyers also took the position that “it didn’t matter that two of the three job applicants who signed on as named plaintiffs testified in court that they read the entire application and knew they didn’t have to mention a marijuana conviction (which neither had anyway!)” The court refused to certify the class and made the following observations (courtesy CJAC blog):
* “There are better ways to filter out impermissible question on job applications than allowing ‘lawyer bounty hunter’ lawsuits brought on behalf of tens of thousands of unaffected job applicants. Plaintiffs’ strained efforts to use the marijuana reform legislation to recover millions of dollars from Starbucks gives a bizarre new dimension to the every day expressions ‘coffee joint’ and ‘coffee pot.'”
* “Enhancing the prospects for obtaining a settlement on a basis other than the merits is hardly a worthy legislative objective.”
* “Given the size of the class, the potential exposure is so large that the pressure to settle may become irresistible. …’This is a valid concern: Many corporate executives are unwilling to bet their company that they are in the right in in big-stakes litigation, and a grant of class status can propel the stakes of a case into the stratosphere …This interaction of procedure with the merits justifies an earlier appellate look. By the end of the case it will be too late — if indeed the case has an ending that is subject to appellate review.'”
* “The civil justice system is not well-served by turning Starbucks into a Daddy Warbucks.”
More coverage: Aaron Morris, Metropolitan News-Enterprise, and Carlton DiSante & Freudenberger. One of the plaintiff’s lawyers in the case, H. Scott Leviant, is known for his blog The Complex Litigator.