Cold Stone Can’t Shed Pistachio-Less Ice Cream Deception Suit

Cold Stone Creamery’s parent company Kahala Franchising LLC failed to convince a federal judge to toss a proposed class action alleging the brand deceptively labels its pistachio ice cream because the flavor comes from synthetic ingredients rather than the actual nut.

The US District Court for the Eastern District of New York on Thursday rejected the Kahala’s argument that the lawsuit was recycling the failed “vanilla cases’ logic” from dismissed lawsuits over synthetic vanilla flavorings. Judge Gary R. Brown noted that those cases helped identify elements that can be used in an informal balancing test to assess claims related to ...