Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK, Feb 2 (Reuters) – A judge says Pediasure Grow & Gain nutritional drink misled consumers that it was “clinically proven” to help children grow taller. , rejected Abbott Laboratories' effort to dismiss the New York City grandmother's lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan said Friday that Joan Noriega's complaint provides “strong, evidence-backed reasons to doubt Abbott's claims that clinical studies support the company's marketing claims. ”.
Noriega cited three studies funded by Abbott himself that found no link between PediaSure and height growth.
“The existence of research that contradicts the label's claims strengthens the plausibility of the complaint's contention that the label misleads reasonable consumers,” Engelmayer wrote.
“This lawsuit is without merit,” Abbott said in a statement Saturday, adding that Pediasure is a nutritional solution for children scientifically designed to support growth and development.
Noriega, who lives in the Bronx, New York, bought Pediasure Grow & Gain vanilla and strawberry drinks for her 8-year-old grandson, who is “short for his age,” believing it would help him grow taller. He said he did. After a year of drinking Pediasure twice a day, she said, her grandson, although still short, had become “very overweight,” so she stopped buying him drinks.
Noriega's attorney, James Denley, said in an interview that he was pleased with the decision, which will allow his client to gather more evidence through discovery.
Abbott had access to research that “proved that the idea that milkshakes could help children grow is completely false,” Denley said. “The marketing was misleading, but Mr. Abbott knew it to be true.”
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from New Yorkers who were tricked into purchasing or overpaying for PediaSure.
Abbott said Pediasure is aimed at children ages 2 to 13 and helps them “grow out of the at-risk weight-for-height percentile (5th to 25th percentile)” within eight weeks.
PediaSure is part of the Abbott Park, Illinois-based company's pediatric nutrition division, which also includes Pedialyte and Similac.
The case is Noriega v. Abbott Laboratories, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 23-04014. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Surbhi Misra in Bengaluru; Editing by Will Dunham and Franklin Paul)
