Food Business Litigation
The food industry is full of special legal considerations — contract manufacturing, FDA and USDA labeling, and intellectual property protection — and those considerations create challenging, novel legal issues for litigation. This firm has the ability to represent food businesses in complex litigation in any of these areas. Contact us.
Led by trial lawyer John Diefenbach. Our litigation practice is led by John Diefenbach, a trial lawyer whose in-house experience at Gruma (one of the largest food manufacturers in the world) means he has sat on the client’s side of a food-business dispute, not just the lawyer’s. That combination — courtroom experience plus operating knowledge of how food companies actually run — is the difference when your business is the defendant. See representative outcomes in our case studies. We also accept litigation referrals from other counsel.
What Are the Common Areas of Food Business Litigation?
We segment food-business disputes into three primary case types:
- Regulatory disputes. Small errors in product labeling can create massive litigation risk. A failure to abide by an obscure FDA labeling requirement can create a cause of action for class-action litigation — “Sugar Free” / “No Added Sugar” claims and undisclosed characterizing flavors are popular triggers. A seemingly simple error can create a six-figure liability under common-law fraud doctrines. Prevention starts with FDA food label compliance review.
- Commercial disputes — errors by co-packers and contract manufacturers. Contract manufacturers and co-packers sometimes fail to make the product correctly. When a co-packer does not manufacture to specification, it is time to assert and enforce the remedies available under a co-packer agreement and/or the Uniform Commercial Code.
- Intellectual-property disputes — theft of trade secrets. Unless expertly defined and enforced through confidentiality and co-packing agreements, rights to trade secrets like product formulas can be tricky to enforce, and subtle changes can create “new recipes” that complicate proof. This is why protecting your food product formulas on the front end matters so much.
What Does Litigation Look Like?
Cases involving class-action firms that arise out of labeling issues usually settle out of court, and the size of the settlement is usually related to the size of the food business named as the defendant. Cases involving co-packer errors are the most common form of litigation; the most effective way to initiate a dispute with a co-packer is to timely reject goods that are “out of spec” in writing, citing specifically to the product characteristics that deviate from the specification in the co-packer agreement. Cases involving theft of intellectual property generally have no quick path to resolution and are usually not resolved until the discovery phase.
Preventative Law Is the Best Approach
The best defensive strategy depends on the area of food-business litigation. For most risks, preventative law is the best and cheapest way to defeat litigation:
- Regulatory. Label review can catch the common errors that plaintiff’s firms and class-action attorneys prey upon.
- Co-packer agreements. A great product specification, included in and merged with a co-packer agreement, is the starting point for successful litigation with a co-packer.
- Theft of intellectual property. Consider adding restrictive covenants — non-compete and non-circumvention clauses — to commercial deals. These remove most of the ambiguity from IP cases and make favorable settlements much easier to pursue.
Because we have deep transactional experience in food-business deals, we can identify strengths and weaknesses in food-business litigation. If you are in the midst of litigation, contact us to see how we can help.
Fractional General Counsel: one flat fee, continuous coverage
Most food-business litigation traces back to a contract or a label that was never reviewed — the disputes are preventable. Our Fractional General Counsel subscription folds this work into one predictable monthly fee instead of billing you per matter — the same in-house legal backing a much larger company would carry, sized for a growing food and beverage brand. Compare Service Plans →
Last reviewed: June 2026
Jason Foscolo
Founder of The Food Law Firm — fractional general counsel for food & beverage businesses nationwide.
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