FRANCHISOR 101: Donut Franchise Relationship Dissected by Court

Lewitt Hackman
Contact

Lewitt Hackman

The parent of Dunkin' Donuts was named along with Starbucks and about 80 other coffee sellers, distributors and retailers in a 2010 lawsuit alleging violations of California's Proposition 65 and Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act. Dunkin Brands, Inc. ("DBI") claimed it doesn't itself buy, sell, roast, distribute or even possess coffee in California, and therefore should not have to put warnings on its coffee. But its argument failed on summary judgment, and DBI will go to trial with its co-defendants in August.

Businesses with 10 or more employees are required to place warnings on products containing chemicals that may cause cancer. Plaintiff, the non-profit watchdog group Council for Education and Research on Toxics ("CERT"), wanted defendants to add warnings to coffees that contain the carcinogen acrylamide.

DBI contended it had franchised all coffee operations to subsidiaries, while it just oversaw its corporate organization, and did not control or produce coffee. CERT pointed to the franchisee subsidiaries' reliance on DBI to operate, arguing that DBI "directs its employees to do all of the acts for all of the subsidiary companies." It claimed that DBI's subsidiaries "intentionally have no employees" to avoid the minimum-employee threshold and that actions by employees at DBI's direction expose Californians to acrylamide in Dunkin' Donuts coffee.

The Court agreed with CERT's argument, determined DBI's "franchise" structure to be "smoke and mirrors," found that selling coffee is not required for liability, ruled the law is to be construed broadly to protect public health, and found DBI's control over its subsidiary franchisees necessarily gave DBI control over product warnings. DBI's list of day-to-day aspects of its franchisees that it did not control - which did not include "product labeling" - only raised an inference that control over subsidiaries could be used to prevent them from selling coffee in violation of Prop 65.

Dunkin' Donuts' loss on summary judgment shows how courts and government may subordinate the protections provided by franchise relationships to perceived public health or other public interest concerns.

Council for Education and Research on Toxics v. Starbucks Corp., et al., BC435759 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Apr. 13, 2010)

DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

© Lewitt Hackman | Attorney Advertising

Written by:

Lewitt Hackman
Contact
more
less

Lewitt Hackman on:

Reporters on Deadline

"My best business intelligence, in one easy email…"

Your first step to building a free, personalized, morning email brief covering pertinent authors and topics on JD Supra:
*By using the service, you signify your acceptance of JD Supra's Privacy Policy.
Custom Email Digest
- hide
- hide