Lawsuit against Texas Pete for not being from Texas dismissed by plaintiff, company says

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (WGHP) — A lawsuit over Texas Pete hot sauce has been dismissed.

According to a release by TW Garner Food Co., the parent company of the Texas Pete brand, Phillip White filed a motion on Sept. 28 to dismiss his lawsuit against the brand. The lawsuit stemmed from the fact that Texas Pete was not from Texas and was in fact from North Carolina and had been ongoing for just over a year when the dismissal was filed.

The court dismissed the lawsuit in its entirety on Wednesday. Garner Foods has “consistently maintained” that the claims in the lawsuit “were false.”

“We at TW Garner Food Co. are delighted with this result. Since the lawsuit was filed, we have remained steadfast in our position that our product labels and trademark are truthful and not misleading in any respect and that the lawsuit had no merit,” President and CEO Ann Garner Riddle said.

Background

Previously, the courts had declined to dismiss the lawsuit at the request of the company, who responded by saying it would “vigorously defend” itself against the accusations.

The class action lawsuit claimed that T.W. Garner Food Co. was deceptively marketing Texas Pete as a Texan product when it’s actually made in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. White’s complaint, filed on behalf of all people in the U.S. who have purchased Texas Pete, asked the court to force Texas Pete to change its name and branding and to give money to past customers.

White’s legal team argued that a “reasonable consumer” could be duped into thinking that Texas Pete is a Texas product due to the brand name and the labeling on the bottle and that he would not have paid the amount of money for a North Carolina-made hot sauce as he would a Texas-made one, which was around $3 at a Ralph’s in his home state of California.

T.W. Garner Food Co. then argued that the name does not necessarily refer to the state of Texas, and instead could be referring to the “coastal town of Texas, North Carolina.”

White has been involved in three other similar class action lawsuits against Kroger, Whole Foods and the product Benefiber.