The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Jan. 15 in favor of pet owners, finding a state court may consider their lawsuit against pet food makers after the consumers withdrew their federal claims.
Manufacturers fended off the lawsuit that alleged they committed fraud by falsely representing that a pre-purchase prescription was required for the pet food.
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 the case is which court system has authority to adjudicate the dispute after the consumers struck out the federal legal issues in the lawsuit when 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 manufacturers falsely 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 district 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 Eighth Circuit reversed, finding that the pet owners’ case relied “explicitly on federal law” and that “federal question jurisdiction exists.”
After the case returned to the federal district court, Wullschleger and Brewer amended the legal complaint to assert state law claims and took out the federal issues the Eighth Circuit named.
They moved to return the case to state court.
Again, the companies contested the venue change.
In July 2023, the Eighth Circuit considered, in its words, “whether amending a complaint to eliminate the only federal questions destroys subject matter jurisdiction.”
“The answer is yes, so the case must return to state court,” the circuit court held.
In the new opinion, Kagan provided an overview of existing law, saying that when a lawsuit filed in state court makes federal law claims, a defendant may remove it to federal court.
If the legal complaint also makes state law claims coming from the same facts, the federal court may exercise supplemental jurisdiction, or authority, over the lawsuit.
But when, after removal has taken place, the plaintiff changes her complaint to erase the federal law claims, leaving only state law claims, the federal court loses authority over the case, Kagan wrote.
“And once that was gone, the court’s supplemental jurisdiction over the state claims dissolved too. Wullschleger had reconfigured her suit to make it only about state law. And so the suit became one for a state court.”
The Supreme Court affirmed the Eighth Circuit. It is unclear when the Missouri state court will take up the lawsuit.
