Court Opinion

ID: 9560388
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:48:30.522456+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:53.275941
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.
I concur. I write separately to emphasize the majority’s caveat that “We do not. . . foreclose the possibility of tort liability premised upon *557the content of foreign-language advertising. For example, we do not decide whether a manufacturer would be liable to a consumer who detrimentally relied upon foreign-language advertising that was materially misleading as to product risks and who was unable to read English language package warnings that accurately described the risks. No such issue is presented here. . . .” (Maj. opn., ante, p. 555.) The issue is not presented because the court implicitly refused to consider any possible evidence of advertising in Spanish in ruling on the summary judgment motion. (Cf. maj. opn., ante, pp. 545-546, fn. 2.) The record suggests the court’s implicit refusal was premised on defense objections that the evidence was hearsay and was not properly authenticated.
With regard to relevance, however, no objection could properly have been sustained. Evidence of the content, timing, duration, and scope of distribution of foreign-language advertising bears substantially on the question whether a non-English-literate consumer has been materially misled about product risks, and a trial court must consider that evidence if properly presented.
The majority do not define “materially misleading as to product risks,” leaving that issue for another day—a day likely to arrive soon, given the high probability that foreign-language media will continue to expand in California.
Popular advertisements for over-the-counter drugs generally emphasize their therapeutic effects, not the harmful or fatal consequences of inadvertent misuse. Yet the proper use and inadvertent misuse of drugs occur in very similar ways: swallowing one pill may prove therapeutic, but more may be fatal. Hence, a foreign-language pharmaceutical advertisement will be “materially misleading as to product risks” if a company extolls a drug’s health benefits in the advertisement yet does not warn a non-English-literate consumer of the risks of misuse in a manner reasonably calculated to reach that consumer before the product is consumed or applied.
If there is such a misrepresentation, then a jury ordinarily should decide the defendant’s tort liability. (See generally Stanley Industries, Inc. v. W.M. Barr & Co., Inc. (S.D. Fla. 1992) 784 F.Supp. 1570.)
To conclude that notice must be reasonably calculated to reach the non-English-literate consumer is not necessarily to decide that the foreign-language warning must appear in or on the promotional material itself, or on the product’s warning label. Notice on a drug’s product label, in the foreign languages in which the drug is advertised, not to take or apply the drug *558before reading a package insert’s detailed warning in those languages may, depending on the facts, be sufficient to warn of hazards and yet satisfy federal law. (See maj. opn., ante, p. 550, fn. 4.) In general, I believe that as long as an over-the-counter drug manufacturer gives reasonable notice, by any legal means, of possible side effects in a foreign language to a non-English-literate consumer whose purchase has been induced in that language, it has met the standard of conduct California tort law demands.
Appellant’s petition for a rehearing was denied February 24, 1994.