Opinion ID: 75900
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Focus Dailies Letter

Text: 9 The Focus Dailies letter states that Focus Dailies are preferred 5 to 1 over Acuvues. R1-33, Ex. A (emphasis omitted). The letter elaborates that 84% of participants in a recent study preferred Focus Dailies, finding them to be more comfortable, more convenient, and easier to handle than ACUVUE lenses. Id. The district court found that the Focus Dailies Letter misrepresented to consumers the superiority of Focus Dailies by failing to make it clear to the consumer that the study was comparing modalities (i.e. length of time wearing the lens, one day wear versus two week wear) and not the quality of lenses with the same modality. R1-38-4. 10 As the common law of false advertising has developed, several circuits have determined that the nature of a plaintiff's burden in proving an advertisement to be literally false should depend on whether the defendant's advertisement cites consumer testing. See, e.g., C.B. Fleet Co. v. SmithKline Beecham Consumer Healthcare L.P., 131 F.3d 430, 435 (4th Cir.1997); Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Pharms. Inc. v. Marion Merrell Dow, Inc., 93 F.3d 511, 514-15 (8th Cir.1996); Castrol, Inc. v. Quaker State Corp., 977 F.2d 57, 62 (2d Cir.1992). If an advertisement cites such testing, the advertisement is labeled as an establishment claim. BASF Corp., v. Old World Trading Co., 41 F.3d 1081, 1090 (7th Cir.1994). To prove an establishment claim literally false, the movant must prove that these tests did not establish the proposition for which they were cited. Quaker State Corp., 977 F.2d at 63. We find this method of evaluating such advertisements to be analytically sound, and adopt the reasoning for use in the Eleventh Circuit. 11 In this case, the goal of the CLS study was to evaluate the overall patient preference of Focus Dailies one day contact lenses as compared to two-week replacement Acuvue lenses. R1-33, Ex. B at 1. The CLS study concluded that a significant majority of the test participants preferred Focus Dailies. Id. at 3. In its Focus Dailies letter, 1-800 leads with a quotation from the CLS study: patients concluded that the Focus Dailies lens was more comfortable overall, more convenient and easier to handle than the two-week Acuvue lens. R1-33, Ex. A (quoting R1-33, Ex. B at 3). The Focus Dailies letter explicitly states that the CLS study compared a one-day lens to a two-week lens. Using the establishment claim method of evaluating the contested advertisement, the district court's finding of literal falsity cannot be upheld. 12 It is true that the CLS study includes two variables: brand and modality. Modality is not a constant, and to that extent the design of study was imperfect. 5 The fact that a study's design is imperfect, however, does not render 1-800's advertisements false. 6 J&J cannot prove that the CLS survey reached a conclusion different from the proposition cited in the Focus Dailies letter. Because the district court did not properly evaluate the advertised proposition, and because J&J cannot satisfy the burden of proof once the proposition is appropriately analyzed as an establishment claim, we conclude that the district court's decision with respect to the Focus Dailies letter was error.