The California law firm of Callahan & Blaine recently filed a class action lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court against some of California’s largest distributors and retailers of Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
A comprehensive study by the UC Davis Olive Center at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science at the University of California, Davis has proven that 69% of imported olive oil and 10% of California olive oil failed to meet the IOC/USDA standards for extra virgin olive oil. These samples were found to be adulterated, and/or of poor quality mixed with cheaper refined oils.
Even more astonishing are the names of the defendants in this case; they include some of the most well known olive oil brands sold in California, including, Bertolli, Filippo Berio, Carapelli, Star, Colavita, Mezzetta, Pompeian, Rachael Ray, Mazola, and Safeway Select. The Defendants also include the retailers and supermarkets that sell these products to the California consumers without testing and verifying the quality of the products sold, including, Bristol Farms, Gelson’s Markets, Vons/Pavilions, Ralphs, Stater Brothers, Albertson’s Market, Target, Wal‑mart, K Mart, and Nob Hill Foods.
The retailers who have sold this adulterated olive oil cannot claim ignorance since the industry practice was exposed in The New Yorker magazine on August 13, 2007, on Public Radio on October 18, 2008 and in USA Today on January 23, 2009. Despite this information, these retailers continued to sell the product and progressively increase the prices.
Defendants have been defrauding consumers by claiming the olive oil they are manufacturing, distributing and/or selling is of sufficient quality to call the product extra virgin olive oil, when in fact it is not, and it has been a fact known throughout the industry for some time.
Nevertheless, the deceptive statements are printed clearly on the front of every one of their bottles of extra virgin olive oil. Thus, California consumers are being sold a low quality product for the price of what one would expect to pay for a much higher quality product, which results in an outrageous unjust enrichment to the benefit of the Defendants.
The plaintiffs’ class for this case is represented by attorney Daniel J. Callahan. Mr. Callahan is best known for a $934 million verdict that involved public health and safety issues in which Callahan represented medical product manufacturer Beckman Coulter.
Stay tuned to the media and this blog for more information on this emerging case as it becomes available.
The case number is 30-2010-00395464-CU-FR-CXC, filed in Orange County Superior Court.