A federal judge in Newark has denied challenges from plaintiffs' and defense attorneys to expert witnesses who are offering opinion evidence on methods to verify individual claims and calculate damages in claims over alleged mislabeling of orange juice.

In the 5-year-old multidistrict litigation claiming Tropicana misled customers with the slogan “100 percent pure and natural” on its label, plaintiffs' experts offered novel theories on how to determine whether each claimant actually purchased the product and how much they were damaged by the company's alleged practices of adding natural flavoring to the juice and storing it for up to one year before selling it.

Tropicana sought to exclude a plaintiff's expert who proposed methodology for determining whether individual claimants actually bought the company's orange juice. Plaintiffs' counsel sought to exclude two defense experts who criticized proposed models by plaintiffs' experts for damages and for verifying claimants. But U.S. District Judge William Martini said the motions from each side were not criticisms of the experts' qualifications, but are attacks on the reliability and relevance of their testimony. As such, the arguments from both sides should wait until the court considers whether to grant certification to the putative class, Martini said. At that time, the court would afford appropriate weight to those arguments in deciding whether the plaintiffs have met their burden for meeting the standards for certification, he said.