Sharel Mawby v. Folgers Coffee Marketing

Kansas City, Missouri, consumer law class action lawyers represented the Plaintiff who sued on a Missouri Merchandising Practices Act and unjust enrichment.



Missouri resident Mark Smith bought containers of Folgers coffee that featured

representations about the number of six-ounce cups that the coffee in each container

could produce. Believing the representations to be misleading at best and downright

false at worse, Smith, on behalf of himself and others similarly situated to him, sued

the Folger Coffee Company and its corporate parent, the J.M. Smucker Company. For-2

the sake of simplicity we will refer to the defendants as "Folgers.” Smith claimed that

Folgers had violated the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, see Mo. Rev. Stat.

§ 407.020.1, and claimed that Folgers was unjustly enriched at his expense.



Smith's lawsuit is one of several similar suits brought against Folgers around

the country that the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred to the U.S.

District Court for the Western District of Missouri for pretrial proceedings. See 28

U.S.C. § 1407(a). After the district court appointed interim class counsel at the

parties' behest, the parties filed a consolidated class complaint and later moved to

certify six separate statewide classes led by different class representatives. They

proposed that Smith represent a class of people who bought certain Folgers products

"in Missouri for personal, family, or household purposes” after a specific date. The

district court, without objection from the parties, decided that it would consider

whether to certify the Missouri class before considering whether to certify classes

involving purchases made in other states

The district court, over Folgers’s objection, certified a class for Smith to represent, and Folgers, with our permission, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(f), appealed that decision.



The Circuit Court agreed with Folgers that the class was improperly certified, and so it reversed and remanded.