Killeen v. McDonald's Corp.
Killeen v. McDonald's Corp.
Opinion of the Court
In this putative class action, plaintiff sues McDonald's Corporation and one of *1013its franchisees claiming that they violated the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, 815 ISCS 505/2 ("ICFA"), and unlawfully enriched themselves, by deceptively advertising and marketing certain "Extra Value Meals" for sale in their restaurants. Defendants have moved to dismiss the complaint on various grounds, but I confine my analysis to a single, dispositive issue.
According to the complaint, defendants market and sell Extra Value Meals that bundle together several menu items that can also be purchased a la carte. For example, defendants' "Sausage Burrito Extra Value Meal" allegedly contains two sausage burritos, hash browns, and a medium coffee, which consumers can also order individually. According to the complaint, defendants marketed Extra Value Meals as "a value," meaning that the marketing suggested that the cost of an Extra Value Meals was less than the aggregate cost of its individual components purchased separately, when that was not always the case. For example, plaintiff claims that after seeing defendants' advertising, she purchased a Sausage Burrito Extra Value Meal at a Chicago McDonald's for $5.08 when she would have paid only $4.97 had she ordered the individual items in the Extra Value Meal a la carte. Plaintiff claims that defendants' advertising and marketing was intended to dupe consumers (two classes of whom she seeks to represent) into paying more for items they could have bought at a lower cost.
Plaintiff's theory has superficial appeal: common experience favors her assertion that consumers expect to pay less for items bundled together and billed as a "value" package than they would pay if they purchased the items separately. But even assuming defendants' marketing of the Extra Value Meal had a tendency to mislead consumers in this respect, Illinois law is clear that where other information is available to dispel that tendency, there is no possibility for deception. Bober v. Glaxo Wellcome PLC ,
Plaintiff does not claim that the prices defendants charged for their menu items were unavailable to her at the time she made her purchase. Indeed, anyone familiar with fast-food restaurants such as McDonald's surely knows that prices are typically displayed on menus located near the registers. Understandably, plaintiff may not have wished to take the time to compare prices, but there is no question that doing so would have dispelled the deception on which her claims are based. Accordingly, this is not a case in which consumers would have to consult an ingredients list or other fine print to determine *1014whether prominent images or labels a defendant uses in connection with its product accurately reflect the product's true nature or quality. Cf. Williams v. Gerber Products Co. ,
Plaintiff argues that Tudor , Trujillo , and a third case defendant cites, Batson v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. ,
For the foregoing reasons, plaintiff's complaint is dismissed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Kelly KILLEEN v. MCDONALD'S CORPORATION and Salabad, LLC
- Cited By
- 9 cases
- Status
- Published