Tuesday, August 25, 2026

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Campbell Co. Wants Suit Alleging Website Mischief Tossed

Soup-Maker Asserts Gathering of Data as to Online Searches for Products Does Not Invade Privacy

By a MetNews Staff Writer

The Campbell Company, maker of soups and a myriad of other products, is asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to jettison a putative class action alleging that it permits third parties—including Facebook, Google, Amazon.com, TikTok, and X—to place cookies on its main website and those of its subsidiaries that gather “private” information on those who search for products.

Primary reliance is placed by the plaintiffs on the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”), but also cited are the state Constitution’s privacy clause, the California anti-wiretap laws, a Penal Code statute barring theft by fraud, and the right to privacy under the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

In a brief filed on Friday, Campbell argued that in light of the innocuousness of the information that’s gathered, the named plaintiffs lack Article III standing because they cannot show injury.

Organic Chicken Broth

An amended complaint, filed June 15, provides the example of someone searching the website of a Campbell-controlled company, co-defendant Pacific Foods of Oregon, for organic chicken broth. It says that the inquiry will be transmitted to Meta Platforms, Inc, proprietor of Facebook, declaring:

“When combined with other data sent to the Facebook domain, this cookie allows Meta to track users’ browsing activities. Facebook uses this data for various purposes, such as personalizing content, enhancing ad targeting accuracy, and refining its user experience.”

In a reply brief filed on Friday, Campbell scoffed at the notion that the accumulation of data relating to inquiries as to organic chicken broth intrudes on privacy interests. It remarked that notwithstanding the plaintiffs’ “labeling this information as ‘personal’,” the fact is that the matter of “food products searched for, viewed, and purportedly added to a shopping cart do not identify Plaintiffs, reveal anything about their backgrounds, health, finances, beliefs, or associations, or disclose anything a reasonable person would regard as private.”

Serial Litigation

Campbell, in its opening brief, filed July 6, said:

“This case is the latest in a ‘raft’ of meritless litigation under the California Invasion of Privacy Act…engulfing California state and federal courts. In the last few years, plaintiff firms have sued hundreds of websites for allegedly violating CIPA, and Plaintiffs’ counsel in this case, Gutride Safier, has alone filed nearly 50 similar lawsuits.”

Gutride Safier LLP is a San Francisco law firm.

The brief continues:

“ Each lawsuit is essentially the same: plaintiffs allege that websites utilize ‘cookies and other similar tracking technologies’ to ‘surreptitiously track’ website users and obtain their ‘personal information’ and ‘private communications’ in violation of CIPA’s wiretap, pen register, and trap and trace device provisions. In reality, this website technology is so ubiquitous that this Court, the California State Assembly, and the California Privacy Protection Agency use the same technology on their websites. It comes as no surprise then that many courts have dismissed these lawsuits.”

It comments:

“It is telling that Plaintiffs do not attempt to explain why the Legislature would have enacted a statute that criminalizes itself and the courts of this State.”

‘Cookie Banners’

In opposing the motion to dismiss, the plaintiffs argue that their allegation regarding the “cookie banner”—a box on a website giving the user options as to the receipt of cookies—“makes a difference and that difference is dispositive.”

Its pleading explains cookie banners by saying:

“When consumers visit Defendants’ ecommerce websites…, Defendants display to them popup cookie consent banners, which are different in appearance and form on each Website, but which function similarly and make similar representations. Specifically, each of Defendants’ cookie banners disclose that each Website uses cookies but expressly gives users the option to control how they are tracked and how their personal data is used, including the option to reject all cookies other than those necessary for the Website to operate.”

It provides this screenshot of the cookie banner on www.campbells.com:

The complaint says that “[b]y implementing the cookie banner, Defendant undertook responsibility for ensuring that the banner accurately communicated users’ privacy choices and properly effectuated those choices” yet, it avers, even where a user indicates being averse to non-essential cookies, they are nonetheless planted.

The respondents’ brief declares:

“Nearly every court in this District to consider similar allegations has agreed that where a defendant offers the ability to reject cookies that cause the sharing of users’ private information and then places those cookies anyway, the invasion of privacy is sufficiently concrete to confer standing.”

Cases Inapposite

Friday’s reply brief responds that none of the cases cited by the plaintiffs is in point. They either involve collecting sensitive information, such as political party affiliation, or involve websites on which consumers are able to make purchases “thereby creating the possibility for the collection of financial data in the form of payment information,” the brief says.

It points out that online purchases cannot be made on the Tet Campbell’s nor the Pacific Foods websites, nor on the website of Campbell’s subsidiary Michael Angelo. Purchases can be made on the website of another subsidiary, Rao, it acknowledges, but says that the complaint makes reference to

Campbell asked that the District Court either dismiss the action with prejudice or stay proceedings in light of the issues in the case also being present in Variety Media, LLC v. Superior Court, pending before Div. One of this district’s Court of Appeal.

Campbell’s brief comes in Spears v. The Campbell’s Company, 3:26cv2385.