Pet food makers fending off a consumer class action lawsuit told the Supreme Court on Oct. 7 that a lower court ruling allowing the suit should be overturned.
The manufacturers say the consumers engaged in forum-shopping, a frowned upon practice in legal circles, in which litigants bring their case to the court they believe will render a favorable judgment.
At issue in Royal Canin U.S.A. Inc. v. Wullschleger is whether a federal district court still has authority to adjudicate the dispute even when the consumers struck out the federal legal issues they identified in the lawsuit after the case was transferred out of state court.
Petitioner Royal Canin, headquartered in St. Charles, Missouri, makes food for dogs and cats and is a subsidiary of Mars Inc., which is based in McLean, Virginia. Co-petitioner Nestlé Purina PetCare Co. is based in St. Louis.
Respondents Anastasia Wullschleger, who owns a dog named Clinton, and Geraldine Brewer, who owns a cat named Cassie, originally filed a proposed class action in the Circuit Court of Jackson County, Missouri, in February 2019.
The consumers say the pet food manufacturers imposed a veterinarian’s prescription requirement to buy their products, which created false expectations about the power of the food to heal their sick pets and justified charging more for the products than for regular pet food. They say the prescription requirement was not required by law.
The companies denied wrongdoing and in March 2019, they moved to remove, or transfer, the case to federal court, arguing that it belonged there because questions of federal law were involved.
The pet owners opposed the transfer and moved to return the case to Missouri state court, which the companies opposed. In June 2019, the federal district court granted the motion and remanded the lawsuit to the state court, finding that it did not have the authority to hear the case because the pet owners’ “state-law claims do not necessarily implicate substantial federal issues.”
The companies appealed, and in March 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed the ruling, finding that the pet owners’ case relied “explicitly on federal law” and that “federal question jurisdiction exists.”
When the case returned to the federal district court, the pet owners amended their legal complaint to delete references to federal regulations and the federal questions the Eighth Circuit identified. To return the case to state court, they changed their legal complaint to reassert their claims of wrongdoing under Missouri law.
During oral arguments on Oct. 7, Chief Justice John Roberts told the companies’ attorney that the consumers did not appear to be engaging in forum-shopping because they were trying to return the lawsuit to the court in which they originally filed it.
“I don’t see how that’s a problem here,” Roberts said. “They’re not trying to manipulate anything.”
Katherine Wellington, the companies’ attorney, said this was an example of “forum manipulation, particularly in this case, where they waited almost two years to amend the complaint.”
The justices discussed Rockwell International Corp. v. United States (2007), which involved a False Claims Act lawsuit the government brought against a company.
In the case, the court ruled that a plaintiff who originally launches a lawsuit in federal court is allowed to amend the legal complaint to deprive the federal court of authority to hear the case.
However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed to a footnote in the Rockwell opinion in which the author, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, wrote that “when a defendant removes a case to federal court based on the presence of a federal claim, an amendment eliminating the original basis for federal jurisdiction generally does not defeat jurisdiction.”
“Removal cases raise forum-manipulation concerns that simply do not exist when it is the plaintiff who chooses a federal forum and then pleads away jurisdiction through amendment,” Scalia wrote.
If the footnote is considered binding precedent, then Royal Canin and Purina win, Kavanaugh said.
Wellington said the footnote was “quite essential” and showed that the Supreme Court has long been concerned about the problem of forum-shopping.
The pet owners’ attorney, Ashley Keller, said the footnote was a “stray remark” that lacked the force of precedent.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling in the case by June 2025.
