Monday, April 20, 2026
Page 3
Ninth Circuit:
Case Against Target Over Thread-Count Labels Is Resurrected
Opinion Says Judge Erred in Ruling That Plaintiff’s Allegations That Sheets Bore Factually Impossible Promises Foreclosed Deceptive Advertising Claims Because No Reasonable Consumer Would Be Deceived
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday revived a putative class action against Target Corporation that accuses the retail giant of selling bedsheets that falsely advertise impossibly high thread counts—referring to the total number of yarns per square inch—in violation of California law, declaring that there is a “loose thread” in the reasoning bolstering the District Court judge’s decision to dismiss the complaint, without leave to amend.
Circuit Judge Ana de Alba authored Friday’s opinion, saying that Senior District Court Judge Marilyn L. Huff of the Southern District of California erred in dismissing the operative complaint for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) based on a faulty understanding of case law governing California’s consumer protection laws.
Huff cited the 2021 Ninth Circuit decision in Moore v. Trader Joe’s Company, in which the court concluded that no reasonable consumer would be deceived into thinking that products labelled as “100% New Zealand Maunka Honey” contained a syrup that was wholly derived from the nectar of one type of flower when people generally understand that bees forage from a variety of plants.
Rejecting the judge’s assertion that the case stands for the proposition that factually impossible promises cannot serve as the basis of false advertising claims in California, de Alba remarked:
“The district court understood Moore as holding that allegations of consumer deception based on factually impossible claims fail as a matter of law because ‘no consumer…would reasonably interpret the label in the manner proposed by the plaintiff.’ ”
Opining that “[t]his interpretation is incorrect and overlooks analytical steps required under Moore,” she pointed out that the 2021 case involves ambiguous statements that required reasonable consumers to investigate further to determine the meaning, a circumstance de Alba concluded was absent in the case before the court because a typical shopper’s “knowledge…is likely limited to the fact that a higher thread count…indicates a higher quality sheet.”
Putative Class Complaint
Appealing the dismissal was Alexander Panelli, a California resident who filed the putative class complaint against Target in San Francisco Superior Court on May 8, 2024, claiming that he purchased a set of sheets in September 2023 that said, on the front label, that they were “100% cotton” with a thread count of 800.
In the operative pleading, Panelli asserted violations of the Unfair Competition Law, found at Business & Professions Code §17200 et seq., and the Consumers Legal Remedies Act, codified at Civil Code §1750 et seq., on behalf of himself and similarly situated California consumers.
In the operative complaint, Panelli alleged that “thread count” is measurable by a globally accepted test known as the “ASTM D 3775 method” that “it is physically impossible for cotton threads to be fine enough to allow for 600 or more threads in a single square inch of 100% cotton fabric.” He added that independent testing confirmed that the sheets he purchased had a count of only 288.
After Target, a Minnesota company, removed the matter to federal court based on diversity of citizenship, Huff granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss without leave to amend in October 2024, saying:
“According to [his] own allegations…, Plaintiff’s proposed interpretation of the phrase ‘800 thread count’…in the context of 100% cotton bedsheets is physically impossible to achieve….As such, no reasonable consumer would interpret Defendant’s advertising…in the manner proposed by Plaintiff.”
Friday’s decision, joined in by Circuit Judges Kim McLane Wardlaw and Eric Tung, reverses the of dismissal.
Clarification of Law
Saying that “[b]ecause the district court’s ruling hinged on its erroneous understanding of our caselaw, we now clarify the applicable law,” de Alba noted that the consumer protection laws at stake prohibit any marketing that carries with it the probability of confusing a reasonable consumer.
Commenting that “[a]llegations of literal falsity are the most actionable variety of consumer protection claims,” she acknowledged that, “[a]dmittedly, a claim may be so clearly false that no reasonable consumer would be deceived by it.” However, she opined:
“This exception does not apply in this case because Panelli’s claims are not unreasonable or fanciful. While a vast majority of consumers are, for instance, familiar with the biological nature of bees so that it would be unreasonable for a consumer to think honey was sourced from a single type of flower,….[n]either common knowledge nor common sense would cause a Target shopper to question the veracity of the claim on the bed sheet’s label that the product was of 800 thread count.”
She added:
“Notably,…allowing the district court’s reading of Moore would create an aberrant framework for analyzing literally false advertising. Under the district court’s reading, manufacturers would face no liability for false advertising so long as the claims were wholly false—regardless of whether this falsity is generally knowable to consumers….Such a rule would create an untenable and bizarre situation where partially false advertising would be actionable under California’s consumer protection laws, but wholesale falsity would not.”
Remarking that “the reasonable consumer standard…raises questions of fact that are” only rarely “appropriate for resolution on a motion to dismiss,” she said:
“This is not one of those situations. Panelli’s allegation that it is physically impossible to achieve an 800 thread count on cotton material, alone, does not require the complaint’s dismissal.”
The case is Panelli v. Target Corporation, 24-6640.
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