Pet Owners Win High Court Dispute on Venue in Dog Food Fight (1)

The US Supreme Court sided with pet owners trying to keep their class action over prescription dog and cat food in Missouri state court.

In a unanimous decision Wednesday, the court said pet owners eliminated the federal court’s ability to hear the dispute when they amended their lawsuit to remove the federal questions they had originally raised.

The remaining state-law claims “are ill-suited to federal adjudication,” Justice Elena Kagan said in her opinion.

Anastasia Wullschleger and Geraldine Brewer filed their class action against Royal Canin U.S.A., Inc. and Nestlé Purina PetCare Company in state court in 2019. They alleged the companies used deceptive and misleading marketing to make them believe they needed prescriptions to buy certain food for their pets that contained no real medication and then charged a premium—or, as Kagan put it, “a jacked-up price.”

Purina moved to have the case heard in federal court, since it raised federal issues in accusing the companies of conspiring to inflate prices with the prescription requirement and conspiring to monopolize the market.

The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit initially rejected a federal district court’s decision to send the case back to the Missouri state court, but later agreed after the pet owners changed their lawsuit to remove the antitrust and unjust enrichment claims.

“Wullschleger had reconfigured her suit to make it only about state law,” Kagan said. “And so the suit became one for a state court.”

The federal appellate courts previously split on the issue.

The case is Royal Canin U.S.A., Inc. v. Wullschleger, U.S., U.S., No. 23-677, opinion 1/15/25.