California Court Tosses Honey Producers' Claims Against Rivals' 'Fake' Imports

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on Sept. 13 dismissed a suit from three U.S.-based honey producers related to the alleged import of "fake" honey. Judge Daniel Calabretta held that the honey producers, led by Henry's Bullfrog Bees, failed to include sufficiently specific factual allegations to support their claims that the defendants -- honey importers and distributors -- engaged in fraud (Henry's Bullfrog Bees v. Sunland Trading, E.D. Cal. # 2:21-00582).

The case was initially dismissed by the district court in 2022, also for the plaintiffs' failure to make specific enough claims (see 2203030050). In response, Henry's Bullfrog Bees amended its complaint to add additional allegations.

The court again rejected the honey producers' claims, which named various different types of parties as responsible for flooding the U.S. market with fake honey. The court said that despite "its length," the amended complaint "is largely bare of non-conclusory allegations related to the actual fraud alleged." The complaint "lacks any of the particularized details necessary to support" the fraud claims.

In all, the defendants were sorted into three different groups: certifiers, importers and packers.

Calabretta said that, regarding the certifiers, the honey producers only include two allegations directly related to fraud, the first of which says one of the defendants conducts "sham audits" that another defendant enables "by providing ... a PowerPoint presentation outlining [a] cursory auditing process it must use to ensure any exporter or packer will ‘pass’ ... but do not provide any details about when or where these audits occurred ... .” The second allegation was that one of the defendants accepted a bribe from an exporter looking to secure certification. The court said both allegations failed to include the "who, what, when, where, and how" of the events.

Related to the importer defendants, the court noted that the "bulk" of the honey producers' allegations is a "list of honey shipments each" importer allegedly received from foreign producers. Calabretta said that for each shipment the plaintiffs used "identical, generic allegations" and failed to include "any specific factual basis for these claims, such as how the honey was fake or adulterated."

Lastly, for the packer defendants, the only allegations "are brief with little beyond conclusory statements that these defendants knowingly sold fake or adulterated honey," the decision said.