consumers who bought a series of products body washes lotions and hair care products the relabeled is natural even though they contained numerous synthetic ingredients the district court dismissed the case saying that no reasonable consumer could believe that just because the products were labeled natural they didn't contain synthetic ingredients  also found incorrectly that the plaintiffs had fails to meet their pleading burden under rule nine and finally in a prior set of rulings the court effectively denied the plaintiffs the opportunity to conduct any sort of pre classification discovery first by refusing to waive the local rule that classification motions be filed with the ninety days despite the fact that the parties had stipulated to it and second after that ruling when the plaintiff came back and asked to be allowed to conduct immediate discovery not having to wait for the rule twenty eight conference the court effectively made that argument moot by pushing off if we were to reverse on the other shuttle discovery we do not you're not i'm sorry yes in the event that you reversed the motion to dismiss then yes we're back where we were before but the problem is that as a result of the the sequence of events here we actually filed a motion for class certification on deadline has required but had not been able to do classification discovery as a result the motion did not have elements and it did not have fact support for it that we would very much like to have been able to have we had to meet the certification do the necessary discovery and file a more complete one as we would in a normal course i don't i just don't see how we rule on it when there is no ruling on it but just from mine well i think that the overall point you honor that we've made in our briefs is that you know in the first instance the court refused to allow the waiver from the ninety day rule now the subsequent ruling made it more difficult for us because we were trying to get some sort of discovery but the reality is that that very first ruling killed us because by virtue of the pace of getting discovery and the fact that you have to wait until after you had to wait under the old rules until after having the rule twenty eight  conference there's really no effective way to obtain discovery prior to ninety days after the filing of a complaint if the defendant ever respond to the motion that the defendant opposed though the  motion for immediate discovered to having entered into the stipulation the and it had a change of heart but no i think the defendant was quite willing to say yeah i'm willing to put off this question of classification district court ruled on that i think are clearly in error the first is this question of whether or not the plaintiff's complaint should have been dismissed because somehow reasonable consumers couldn't possibly have found that just because the the product was labeled natural what do we have now that we have any complaint which has some pictures correct do we have and then there's not just a question about the entire so in the complaint and you know frankly in particular this case revolves around the very front label where you have the word natural in a nice little green leaf and it's all there and pretty colors the court said look everybody agrees that natural is a vegan confusing term i don't know where the court got the idea that the plants agreed that natural is of a good confusing term we never stipulated that the complaint says in four different in four different places and when we say natural we say ok what we're talking about we're talking about national greetings what's a natural ingredient well natural is something that's not artificial it's not synthetic it's comes from nature and we give the merriam which webster dictionary hand everything ultimately even all the things it's the chemicals ultimately come from nature right well right and i think that the sort of common sense distinction that drawn by merriam webster frankly and you know by the cases is well is that synthetic or is it natural synthetic in other words is something that's made in a lab like a twinkie you would say if posters have all natural twinkies it was the same ingredient that we're all familiar with i would think that would not be an accurate description of the agrees and twinkies i suspect it would not be an accurate description i you know i would have to do the research and here's the interesting thing is that you know you're really looking at the back label going to help you unless you're a chemist you know chemicals can be natural water is a chemical on the other hand natural chemical and natural chemicals can have some really scary greek sounding names there's a case out of the district of connecticut lang and versus johnson and johnson and we cited it in we brought to the court's attention a supplemental authority where the court says you know look even a blueberry if you look at the if you google the ingredients of a blueberry the ingredients sound scary so you can't tell just by looking at the ingredient list whether something is a natural ingredient or is in fact a synthetic chemical we did the research and there are lots and lots and lots of synthetic chemicals in these products so however it is you really want to define natural you know natural ingredients it's very clear that these products and gradients aren't natural and in fact the defendant isn't such and i think that that's clearly wrong i think that that's wrong on the basis of williams as well williams or scarboro products case where this court in fact was dealing with a natural representation one of the three representation is that we're at issue in the case one of them was you know fruit and other all natural ingredients in the courts that well no reasonable consumer might believe that that means that all of the ingredients in the in the product are in fact a natural that that's a reasonable thing and it was interesting because one of the other representation is that issue in will and williams involved whether or not the products were nutritious and the court in a footnote said you know that if it were that on its own we might say this was puffery but because you know of the that the taliban of what's going on here we're not going to give them the benefit of the doubt there was no question that the natural representation wasn't pottery it wasn't and i don't know maybe that's from i don't know your honor but i do know that a lot of the ingredients in these products are not and the point is that you know what a reasonable consumer looking at this is going to see the natural representation is going to say oh ok i'm like i like natural stuff that's a big industry that's all over one hundred billion dollar industry on natural and so a lot of companies are out there saying how can we grab consumers how can we get them to buy our product how can we differentiate ourselves i know let's convince them that it's natural but they're not doing their homework and they're deceiving people because they're not the least concern the sophisticated consumers standard right it's just the absolutely absolutely but you know a reasonable consumer that's out there looking for natural products isn't out there looking for a product that's got a drop of natural ingredients in a sea of chemical synthetic chemicals not something that's natural and that's what they think this the least a sophisticated consumer reasonable consumer absolutely they are and there are a lot of consumers but i think that when you look at the standard interesting you ask it now they think they're all part of that reasonable group but i think that the you know there are certain statutes where you actually do look at the least sophisticated consumer when you look at the reasonable consumer that's that's not the frame that you want much clarification from me as one of the claims is  but this court has laid out exactly what elements those are good did it very nicely fairly recently in the  it's false the complaint does every single one of those things who is the defendant what is the products where it says where the products were sold that are the subject of the complain when with respect to the plaintiffs it tells you where and when they bought them how we say that they market the products as natural we say you know exactly how they market the products is natural the specific rec supreme court decisions there's this question out there if you've got a damages claim of whether at the classification stage you have to be able to establish a model for getting damages on behalf of the class as a whole and for each product of what people were paying extra and you know your honor if if a court would would simply say that's all you need i'd be delighted some courts have said that other courts have said you have indeed but you have to be able to say how much of the premium that was paid for the product related to the natural representation versus any other representations that were made does get a little complicated and some courts have really held  plaintiffs to a very high standard of how much has to be in that initial filing we can't afford to gamble that the district court is going to be one of those that doesn't ok you're close to have time  did you ask to pose the question what do we know about the labels here and what we know with respect to the representations that are at issue you'll find those in the first amended complaint as i know you're ok so it's important here because there are specific allegations that go to the back panel as well as the front panel and those allegations provide a context that's meaningful and have terms of how we understand this second judgment you posed the question of whether the reasonable consumer may be the least sophisticated consumer and the answer to that has been consistently found in california law that the reasonable consumer is not the least sophisticated consumer and i would refer the court to hill versus roll one ninety five kellett fourth twelve ninety five and that which is discussed in our brief it at page twelve it's very clear that the reasonable customer consumer respect to the questions that are before this court and specifically that the issue that this court that the trial court realized was essential to its ruling which is is there an objective definition of natural in this case that would allow a plausible basis for the plaintiffs to state a claim and based upon the definition that they have proposed in paragraph one footnote one of this amended complaint the answer is clearly no and when one looks in the context of the broader context which is appropriate in this case to see how haynes celestial the albert botanical line provided and meaning and defined what natural meant in the context of a shampoo or up something actually what it was you said it doesn't include in it on the package i guess you said it doesn't include a couple  acids are a class of chemical compounds there was no effort in this case to suggest that all of the ingredients in a shampoo are in fact but tentacle taste quite the contrary the point here and what the what the label shows on its face and what the district court judge found below is that help attended to went out of its way to actively define what natural means and that's further reinforced by paragraph fifteen of the of the first amendment complaint which indicates we make natural one hundred percent vegetarian personal care products and then it continues this means we don't it's so on the face of that the back panel in the context of the explanatory language that's on the front panel and importantly the ingredient list all of those things point to and provide a context for understanding how do we understand the term natural in the context of these cosmetic products which under the code of federal regulations are identified as chemicals manufactured ingredients list is being used to contradict an affirmative representation a defendant cannot look to the ingredient list as a shield for liability that's not the case here the ingredient list i consistent with all of the representations that are made on the front and the back panel and it's entirely consistent does national i know this obviously well as defined by  paragraph fifteen of the first and amended complaint where it states our products contain natural organic and cruelty free ingredient alternatives it doesn't suggest that all for now so i think on the website on the website cited cited by the by the plaintiffs here which are one hundred percent vegetarian the the difficulty and your honor pointed to this question earlier in your question about is invariably almost always used in a synthetic form when it's used in products and it's the very issue that these plaintiffs have said constitutes a synthetic agreement ingredient that that must be found to be unnatural there's nothing of natural about vitamin c and there the alternative definition that they're supporting today a definition is that that is not in the allegations and in fact one of the one of the difficulties that the district court had below is that there is no specific allegation in this complaint as to what these plaintiffs believe natural is what is their understanding and that's why this complaint failed for purposes of rule ninety so in this context then what we're left with is the dictionary definition that existing aims in fact that you don't just agree about what's natural and what isn't natural you disagree about whether it has to be all that a summer well i think in this in this context you're on the f d a has not defined in the cosmetics arena what constitutes i'm sorry because it says it's it is yes ok that is me doesn't exist an individual instance is just the actual correct correct and it's subject to individual understanding in a case by case determination which we see in the food context when with f d a as informal guidance when they indicate that natural shall mean those things at that and includes artificial ingredient ingredients that are normally expected to be there so again even in the food context we see a subjective element that's in that's being introduced so here in this context then what the district court was faced with was in the absence of any allegations as to what these individual plaintiffs believed is this this is like alice in wonderland the word means whatever you say means that basically you're saying no no it must be understanding context and it must be understand as a matter so let's take let's take this hypothetical were able to demonstrate that in the context of shampoo natural is understood by the manufacturers to mean something particular there has never been an in that there is a shelf stable shampoo anywhere on the market that has a right in that there is not a shampoo anywhere on the market that is made in composed of entirely one hundred percent natural ingredients it doesn't exist mountain spring water if i just said mountain spring water not one hundred percent melon spring water and in fact it was fifty percent now and spring water fifty percent flint water is there that ok if it isn't say one hundred percent quantitative representation so yes it does make a difference because when one uses the language one hundred percent naturally source code when you're being absolutely killer about it but that doesn't mean does that mean that people are not  buying a bottle of water representing that case would a reasonable consumer believe reasonably that that that that water was one hundred percent and that there was no mixing i think that survives a motion to dismiss that's not th point one natural is subject to with understanding within its context and circumstances point two in this context where do we find the meaning we find it in the context of the front labels and the back label mandated ingredient list cannot be used as a shield to liability as a means of contradicting representations that appear on the principle display panel at the back label fair enough that's not our issue we embrace williams williams is supportive of our view and inconsistent with the way a range of district courts have analyzed this question following williams in dismissing cases like this one where you have can textual statements that provide meaning to the term natural or provide meaning to representations that are made on a label and in that context it's entirely appropriate for us to look to and in fact it is meaningful for  the court to look to the ingredient list as part of the whole context of understanding a term that was this court's reasoning and freeman versus time and it was similar and it similarly confounding a understand quite what the differences between that in this situation in this it had i know there were other things wrong with the label and and williams but they specifically said that there was a problem with using the word natural a natural so in the context of which they found five separate elements that in together collectively represented affirmative misrepresentations this court decided that it was improper for a defendant to seek to use the ingredient list as a shield that it could not use the ingredient list to create contradictions within representations that were made that's not the case here there has been no affirmative misrepresentation  closest in case a night circuit but in general the cases are all over the lot is that a fair characterization and you pick one said he but there's there are two cases there are two decisions by this court freeman versus time and williams versus gerber following this the court's decision in williams you see two lines of cases there are a group of cases that are predominantly coming out of the northern district of california and involved food in which the court has  found that that the holding in williams limits the ability to prevail on a motion to dismiss without leave to him and you have a second line of cases that includes cases from the central district as well as  case from the northern district as recent as november of this last year which we provided you so you have two lines of cases one technique that takes the limiting language of williams and and expands upon it and suggests that one can only look at the principle display panel another line of cases which includes harrison and palladio and the ward law versus plum matter and this case suggest there is th not as well developed outside of outside of the circuit and have both the plaintiff and defendant can identify cases that if that end up on their side it's essentially the same sites or it's a mixed bag all right is there anything you want to say about the discoveries we're prepared to submit i think i don't need to discuss with this court the the standard of review for changing or overturning  ever graduates from this you don't do i mean it's just a pattern i don't know i don't know your honor and and your to your question there's the matter has not been decided but by the district court below and so from very briefly on the question of context your honor if i were to the put on our website for our firm we are ethical people that means we don't lie i mean what we don't lie that wouldn't suggest to a reasonable consumer that we don't lie is the only way in which we are not ethical people that we are ethical people in other words there's nothing about the sub statement we don't lie that gives you context for the broader statement we're ethical people similarly in this case on the front panel the defendant say natural big green leaf on the back panel they say let me tell you something about our products we have this we don't have that but nothing in there says or or even implies we also cited in our briefs last year from twenty fourteen where they have it it's a case where they have a nother label representation and it says are natural promise on the back and it says we do this and we don't do that and the defendant made a very similar argument and judge armstrong in reviewing it said i understand where you're coming from but there's nothing in this that actually gives a limiting context to the the broader thing that's being challenged here i can't