Thursday, September 10, 2026
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Suit Against Campbell’s Over Tracking Users of Internet Sites Continues—Magistrate Judge
By a MetNews Staff Writer
A magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has rejected a bid by The Campbell’s Company—best known for soups it proclaims in ads to be “m’m, m’m good”—has been effectively portrayed in a putative class action to have acted badly in assuring consumers coming to its websites that they can opt out of being tracked while allowing third parties to plant cookies, enabling them to collect data on the users.
The ruling came on Tuesday. Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson held that the named plaintiffs have standing to assert claims under the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”), finding no merit in the assertion by Campbell’s and a related company that they have set forth no “injury in fact.”
Other claims are well pled, he said, declaring:
“[T]he Court concludes that Plaintiffs have standing to pursue their CIPA claims and that Plaintiffs state cognizable claims for Invasion of Privacy, Intrusion Upon Seclusion, Wiretapping, Use of a Pen Register, Fraud, and Unjust Enrichment.”
Standing to Sue
Campbell argued that the plaintiffs lack Art. III standing inasmuch as any injury was “not concrete because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the allegedly collected data and because the alleged collection does not constitute highly offensive conduct historically actionable at common law.” The plaintiffs countered that the defendants “presented” them “with a mere illusion of control over their information and then allowed the Third Parties to collect that information anyway” and that such amounted to a concrete injury.
Hixson said that the plaintiffs “plausibly allege claims” and “allege specific harm arising from Defendants’ violation of their privacy rights” by depriving them of control over personal information as to their online activity.
He rejected the assertion by Campbell that a lack of injury is established by the Ninth Circuit’s 2025 decision in Popa v. Microsoft Corp. There, District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York, sitting by designation, wrote that plaintiff Ashley Popa had no standing to pursue a putative class action based on “session-replay technology”—which allows a business to capture and reproduce customers’ interactions with its website—having been used when she went to a website maintained by PSP Group LLC.
She sued PSP along with Microsoft, which devised the software, known as “Clarity,” that tracked her. Rakoff said:
“Popa does not explain how the tracking of her interactions with the PSP website caused her to experience any kind of harm that is remotely similar to the ‘highly offensive’ interferences or disclosures that were actionable at common law…. Popa identifies no embarrassing, invasive, or otherwise private information collected by Clarity. Indeed, the monitoring of Popa’s interactions with PSP’s website seems most similar to a store clerk’s observing shoppers in order to identify aisles that are particularly popular or to spot problems that disrupt potential sales.”
Popa Differentiated
Hixson said in Tuesday’s ruling that “Defendants’ assertion that Plaintiffs’ allegations are like those in Popa falls flat.” He explained:
“[U]nlike in Popa, Plaintiffs allege that they were told by Defendants that they would not be tracked, yet Defendants, along with other third parties, gathered broad swaths of information about Plaintiffs even after they left the Websites.”
The judge continued:
“So in Plaintiffs’ case, it is like a store clerk telling shoppers they would not be tracked by anyone, then secretly placing tracking devices on shoppers so that third parties could follow the shoppers around outside the store for periods of time (up to a year or more) to collect information about the shoppers. This is not the same as in Popa.”
Claims Stated
Hixson went on to find that “Plaintiffs sufficiently allege an invasion of privacy claim under at least the California constitution and a common law intrusion upon seclusion claim” and that each of the other claims was adequately pled.
One of the claims is for an alleged violation of California Penal Code §638.51, a part of the state Invasion of Privacy Act, which bars use of a “pen register” which records all numbers called from a particular telephone line. Hixson determined that the statute can be applied where there is tracking on the Internet and is not confined to use of a telephone.
Campbell asked that proceedings in the District Court be stayed while the state Court of Appeal decides the breadth of §638.51 in a case before it. Hixson declined the request, saying that a stay would prevent “Plaintiffs from moving forward with all their other claims.”
Co-defendant of Campbell’s is Pacific Foods of Oregon LLC, which Campbell’s owns. The websites that are involved are campbells.com, Rao’s.com, pacificfoods.com and michaelangelos.com.
The case is Spears v. The Campbell’s Company, 3:26-cv-02385.
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