A woman from Farmingdale, Long Island, has filed a class action lawsuit against Cold Stone Creamery after a visit to its Levittown store, due to a reported lack of actual pistachio nuts in her pistachio-flavored ice cream.
Lead plaintiff Jenna Marie Duncan’s lawsuit was approved by a federal judge in New York, U.S. District Court Judge Gary R. Brown, after she purchased pistachio ice cream from the store back in July 2022, as reported by NBC News.
According to reports, Duncan said in her suit that Cold Stone’s flavors “do not contain the represented ingredients.” She also listed the flavors mango, coconut, orange, mint, and butter pecan ice creams along with the orange sorbet as examples of falsely advertised desserts, arguing that customers are being duped.
Duncan reportedly found out that there are no pistachios used in the ice cream through the Cold Stone Creamery website after purchasing the dessert, USA Today reported. She said that had she known that the product did not contain actual pistachios, she would not have bought it or would have wanted to pay considerably less for it, as written in the lawsuit.
In his ruling, Brown acknowledges that Duncan’s alleged claims of deceptive practices under New York’s General Business Law “are plausible on their face” in relation to the pistachio ice cream she purchased. The state’s law prohibits “deceptive acts and practices in the conduct of any business, trade or commerce or in furnishing of any service.”
The Cold Stone Creamery website says that its pistachio ice cream contains pistachio flavoring, with other ingredients including water, ethanol, propylene, glycol, natural and artificial flavor, yellow 5 and blue 1.
Kahala Franchising LLC, the parent franchiser of about 1,000 Cold Stone locations around the world, did not immediately comment on the class action lawsuit.
However, Kahala has sought to have the case dismissed. The franchise argues that the case is not supported as there is a detailed list of ice cream ingredients published online.
