A Long Island woman went nuts when she discovered the pistachio ice cream she purchased did not contain pistachios.
That’s when Jenna Marie Duncan filed a class action lawsuit against Cold Stone Creamery.
She and others in the lawsuit claim the ice cream chain sold some flavors that “do not contain their represented ingredients.”
The lawsuit was given the OK by a federal judge in New York to proceed, according to the Associated Press.
Duncan bought pistachio ice cream from a Cold Stone Creamery store in Levittown, New York, around July 2022.
Duncan “reasonably believed that the Pistachio ice cream she purchased from defendant contained pistachio,” according to a lawsuit.
However, Duncan read on the company’s website that there were no pistachios in the ice cream. Listed on the ingredients were “pistachio flavoring.”
“When consumers purchase pistachio ice cream, they expect pistachios, not a concoction of processed ingredients,” the lawsuit reads. The lawsuit added noting competitors such as Haagen-Dazs use real pistachios in their ice cream.
The lawsuit added there were also issues with the ingredients in Cold Stone’s mango, coconut, orange, mint, butter pecan ice creams and its orange sorbet.
U.S. District Court Judge Gary R. Brown, wrote how the case “raises a deceptively complex question about the reasonable expectations of plaintiff and like-minded ice cream aficionados.”
He posed the question —should a consumer ordering pistachio ice cream expect pistachios in the product?
“And if the answer is no, should that leave them with a bitter aftertaste,” the judge wrote in the , decision that was released in May.
Brown wrote Duncan’s claims of deceptive practices under New York’s General Business Law “are plausible on their face” when it comes to the pistachio ice cream. The state’s law prohibits “deceptive acts and practices in the conduct of any business, trade or commerce or in furnishing of any service.”
However, Brown wrote it gets tricky when an ice cream manufacturer to make when it comes to modern-day flavors, noting “when one orders a ‘Moose Tracks’ ice cream cone, the hoofprints of the largest member of the deer family linguistically acts as an adjective.”
Lawyers for Kahala Franchising LLC, the parent franchiser of nearly 1,000 Cold Stone stores worldwide, sought to have the case dismissed.
The argued a detailed list of the ice cream ingredients are published online.
“A regional director of operations for Kahala said in court records that no flavor placard at the Levittown location indicated the ice creams are ‘made with’ any particular ingredient,” per the AP.
As for the flavors listed in the lawsuit, he said “consumers are able to see for themselves there are no ‘chunks’ of what appear to be any specific ingredients in the ice cream that would indicate a particular ice cream contains a certain ingredient.”
