I guess this is a breach of 
contract case. As reported here (and elsewhere), a bunch of Stella Artois enthusiasts filed a nationwide class action against Red Robin, alleging that they had paid for sixteen-ounce beers but were served in fourteen-ounce glasses. If you multiply those two ounces by all the sales at the franchise-owned stores, you get yourself to the $5 million amount in controversy requirement and qualify to make a claim under the Class Action Fairness Act. Or so Red Robin Claimed in trying to move the case to federal court. U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey rejected Red Robin’s math and remanded back to state court. Red Robin’s calculations left out the inconvenient fact that the issue was only two ounces of beer per each sixteen-ounce sale and that not all beer sales were for sixteen-ounce beer sales.
Judge Dorsey then lit up Red Robin with beer puns:
- Red Robin’s figures are mostly foam
- [Plaintiff’s] remand motion takes the fizz out of those numbers
- Red Robin distills this number down further
- [T]emperance must be exercised
- Red Robin tries to tap into sales
- Nor has Red Robin shown that a fee award will get it to the fill line
- Red Robin attempts to satisfy [its] burden with a strange brew
- Red Robin makes no effort to address that stout disparity
I’m generally not a fan of jokey legal opinions, as it denigrates the parties’ claims. But as this is only a ruling on a procedural motion in a case where not much seems to be at stake, I raise my glass to Judge Dorsey.
[h/t to OCU 1L Howard Hennessey]
