Brother International Favored in Summary Judgment for National Class Action Lawsuit

Brother International Corporation (“BIC”), the distributor of Brother-brand products in the U.S., was recently granted favored summary judgment by a Federal District Court in New Jersey, reportedbusinesswire.com.

Filed in 2011, the class action lawsuit has four named plaintiffs who claimed that all purchasers of certain models of Brother-brand color laser printers were “damaged” by “inadequately disclosed” design features which made the printers use color toner at a higher rate than expected and required toner replacement before each cartridge delivered its advertised yield.

Plaintiffs tried to prove their claims by reviewing thousands of documents produced by BIC and moved to certify a national class suing BIC under New Jersey’s consumer protection.

BIC rejected the motion for class certification and also moved for summary judgment based on evidence from plaintiffs’ deposition testimony and data recorded by plaintiffs’ printers. That evidence showed that plaintiffs’ color toner cartridges had performed as advertised. Brother-brand toner cartridges are advertised as being able to print a certain number of pages at 5% average toner coverage. This advertising is based on testing performed under an industry-standard protocol published by the International Standards Organization.

The District Court deemed that plaintiffs had no evidence that Brother-brand printers do not work as advertised. There was no evidence that plaintiffs’ color toner cartridges failed to deliver their advertised page yield. In testing conducted by experts, Brother-brand color toner cartridges met or exceeded their advertised page yield. Plaintiffs presented theories for measuring their alleged damages, all of which were rejected by the District Court.

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