General Mills Hit with Suit Over Cheerios Ingredient

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 08:00:21 +0000

NEW YORK (Reuters) – General Mills Inc has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit claiming the company failed to warn consumers about traces of the weedkiller glyphosate in its Cheerios cereals.

A Florida woman in her Thursday lawsuit in Miami federal court said she never would have purchased the company’s Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios had she known they contained the chemical, which has been classified as a “probable human carcinogen” by the World Health Organization’s cancer unit.

Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide sprayed on fruit, vegetables and other food crops to control weeds. It is the key ingredient of Monsanto’s Roundup, one of the most popular glyphosate-containing weedkillers.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in September 2017 concluded a decades-long assessment of glyphosate risks and found the chemical not likely carcinogenic to humans.

General Mills in a statement said it did not comment on pending litigation. The company in said its products are safe and “without question” meet regulatory safety levels set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that farmers growing its crops follow.

“We continue to work closely with farmers, our suppliers and conservation organizations to minimize the use of pesticides on the crops and ingredients we use in our foods,” the company said.

Mounira Doss seeks to represent a nationwide and a Florida class of consumers who purchased the two products, according to her lawsuit. She claims violations of Florida’s consumer protection laws, alleging that General Mills failed to disclose or actively concealed the glyphosate content from consumers and the public.

Doss said the company instead made false or misleading comments about the cereal by marketing it with terms including “wholesome goodness for toddlers and adults.”
Her lawsuit also alleges breach of warranty and unjust enrichment claims.

Doss in her complaint refers to an Aug. 15 report by the Environmental Working Group, which said it found traces of glyphosate in 43 out of 45 cereal samples it tested. The activist group said glyphosate has been detected in 31 of those samples at levels higher than 160 parts per billion, a benchmark the group says endangers children’s health.
In the three Cheerios samples the group tested, glyphosate was detected at 490 to 530 parts per billion, according to the report.

The EPA has set so-called maximum residue limits to regulate the amount of pesticides left on food. Those tolerance levels for glyphosate on crops, including soy beans, corn, grains and cereal range from 100 to 100,000 parts per billion.

The debate over the safety of glyphosate has gathered steam after a San Francisco jury earlier this month awarded $289 million to a California school groundskeeper who blamed Monsanto’s glyphosate-containing weedkillers, including Roundup, for his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cancer.

The case is: Mounira Doss et al v. General Mills Inc at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, case no. 18-cv-61924.

Uber Drivers Win Nationwide Class Action Over “Safe Rides” Fee

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 20:58:49 +0000

STORY BY: DANIEL WIESSNER

(Reuters) – A federal judge in California has ruled that Uber Technologies Inc violated its agreements with drivers by subtracting a one-dollar “safe rides fee” from their pay on some trips.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland on Thursday granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and said that under the agreements, Uber was required to charge the fee to passengers, and not drivers.

Rogers also granted the plaintiffs’ motion to certify a nationwide class of about 9,600 drivers who have opted out of an arbitration agreement with the company.

The ruling only applies to fees for short trips, called “minimum fare rides,” in which Uber charged a minimum fare rather than charging by time and distance. Uber in court filings estimated that it would owe the drivers $1.4 million in compensatory damages if it lost the case.

John Crabtree of Crabtree Law in Seattle, who represents the plaintiffs, said Uber’s estimate could be low, and that he would also seek millions of dollars in punitive damages. He said a significant percentage of Uber drivers’ trips are minimum fare rides.

Uber spokesman Matt Wing said the company is reviewing the decision.

In 2014, Uber announced that it would charge riders a one-dollar fee that would be used to conduct more rigorous background checks of drivers and provide them with safety training.

Uber in June proposed a $32.5 million settlement in a separate case in federal court in San Francisco filed by passengers who say they should not have been charged the “safe rides” fee because Uber did not conduct industry-leading background checks as it had claimed. The settlement must still be approved by a federal judge.

Thursday’s ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in 2016 by four drivers who accused Uber of lowering its minimum fare by one dollar, and then adding the fee on top of it, instead of charging the $1 fee directly to riders.

They claimed Uber breached agreements signed by drivers in 2013 and 2014 that required the company to pay them 80 percent of any fare. The plaintiffs said that after the safe rides fee was deducted, their pay for short trips dipped below that level.

Uber argued that under the agreements, it was permitted to deduct fees from the “total fare” charged to passengers, and that for short trips, the minimum fare was the total fare.

But Rogers on Thursday said that the agreements treated the minimum fare and various fees, including the safe rides fee, as separate components of the total fare.

Crabtree, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, said class members will be owed 80 cents for every minimum fare ride they gave, which is 80 percent of the one-dollar fee subtracted from their pay.

Rogers certified a nationwide class, rejecting Uber’s claim that the named plaintiffs did not have standing to sue on behalf of the class because their depositions contradicted certain claims in the lawsuit.

The judge said that in order to certify the class, the plaintiffs only had to allege that they suffered the same type of injury as other drivers.

The case is Congdon v. Uber Technologies Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 4:16-cv-2499

Class Action Lawsuits – Hartung Schroeder

General Mills Hit with Suit Over Cheerios Ingredient

Uber Drivers Win Nationwide Class Action Over “Safe Rides” Fee