United Natural Foods Unable to Shake Investors’ Profits Suit

A federal judge mostly denied United Natural Foods Inc.’s bid to escape a shareholder lawsuit alleging the organic food provider hid its reliance on unsustainable, inflation-based profit gains after Covid-19 struck.

Investors plausibly alleged the company made a series of “misleading half-truths” about what drove its profit margins and how sustainable they would be, Judge Jessica G.L. Clarke in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York said in a Sept. 13 decision.

“By listing potentially positive trends and downplaying potentially negative ones as temporary or discrete, while omitting the elephant in the room, these ...