SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Legal Newsline) - The California Chamber of Commerce is fighting a lawyer-backed science group’s attempt to stay a judicial ruling temporarily blocking lawsuits over acrylamide under California’s Proposition 65.
The Council for Education and Research on Toxics shouldn’t get a “second bite at the apple” with arguments it already lost, the Chamber argues in a recent brief it filed with U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller in Sacramento. CERT, a nonprofit that is closely aligned with plaintiff lawyers who have earned millions of dollars in fees from Prop 65 litigation, was one of the first to sue over acrylamide, a naturally occurring chemical that also forms in vegetable-based foods when they are cooked.
Mueller
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Legal Newsline) - A federal judge has blocked lawyers from suing companies under California’s Proposition 65 over the presence of acrylamide in food, saying it is far from settled science the naturally occurring chemical causes cancer in humans.
The California Chamber of Commerce sued California in 2019, saying the state was violating the First Amendment right to freedom of speech by forcing companies to make false statements on their products or risk financially ruinous litigation. Prop 65 requires companies to list any chemicals “known to the state of California to cause cancer” on warning labels.
The law includes a “private right of action” that allows lawyers to recover legal fees if they sue companies and win.
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Food producers can breathe a sigh of relief, at least temporarily, thanks to efforts by the California Chamber of Commerce resulting in a preliminary injunction barring the State of California and all private plaintiffs from filing any new Proposition 65 lawsuits targeting acrylamide in food and beverage products. On March 31, 2021, Chief United States District Judge for the Eastern District of California, Kimberly J. Mueller, issued a 31-page order following the briefing, expert declarations, and a virtual hearing on December 11, 2020. In her order, Judge Mueller held that the State had not shown that the Proposition 65 cancer warnings it requires for acrylamide are purely factual and uncontroversial. Nor did it show that Proposition 65 imposes no undue burden on those who would provide a more carefully worded warning. Judge Mueller also denied a motion for summary judgment brought by the intervening defendant and Proposi
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A California district court has granted the California Chamber of Commerce’s preliminary injunction motion and prohibited the filing of new Proposition 65 lawsuits alleging exposure to acrylamide in food, pending the outcome of the case filed by the Chamber against the Attorney General’s office challenging enforcement of the cancer warning for acrylamide.
The order by Judge Kimberly J. Mueller states that “[w]hile this action is pending and until a further order of this court, no person may file or prosecute a new lawsuit to enforce the Proposition 65 warning requirement for cancer as applied to acrylamide in food and beverage products.” The injunction applies to the Attorney General as well as private enforcers.