GIGO? literal falsity and a remedy mismatch

InSinkErator LLC v. Joneca Co., No. 8:24-cv-02600-JVS-ADS, 2025 WL 250032 (C.D. Cal. Jan. 10, 2025)

InSinkErator, allegedly the world’s largest manufacturer of garbage disposals for home and commercial use (and to its shame, an entity that sued a TV show for dilution for showing a garbage disposal being used unsafely), sued its competitor Joneca for falsely advertising the horsepower of its garbage disposals and secured a preliminary injunction.

Joneca prominently claims that its garbage disposals are rated at 1/2, 3/4, 1, and 1 1/4 horsepower on its product packaging, as well as its promotional materials online and in brick-and-mortar retail stores nationwide. These garbage disposals tend to match the same horsepower advertised by InSinkErator on its disposals, but at a cheaper price. InSinkErator’s testing revealed results approximately 39% below the claimed 1 1/4 horsepower disposal, and 24% below the claimed 1 horsepower disposal; none of Joneca’s products allegedly produced the claimed horsepower.

Joneca didn’t deny the test findings, but argued that the recognized standard for garbage disposals looks only at input horsepower and not the output horsepower measured by InSinkErator. Thus, it argued that there was no falsity, because all of the tested samples met or exceeded the input-based horsepower rating.

The key question, then, was whether “horsepower” was unambiguous. If the court construed the question to be “what do consumers think ‘horsepower’ means?” maybe it would have required a consumer survey. But the court didn’t; it accepted testimony about industry standards, and thus finds literal falsity. Joneca’s expert relied on the Underwriter Laboratories compliance standard UL 430 Waste Disposers, which establishes a method for rating horsepower of garbage disposals on an input basis. But that was a safety standard, not meant to be used to measure horsepower, as confirmed by engineers at UL. The court was more persuaded by InSinkErator’s expert and sources such as the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (and others), which requires claims of horsepower on motors to be derived from the torque output by the motor. Ultimately, a court may determine literal falsity “based on its own common sense and logic interpreting the message.” See Edminston v. Jordan, 98 Civ. 3298 (DLC), 1999 WL 1072492, at *9 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 24, 1999). “The general consensus among engineers, even if not specific to the garbage disposal industry, appears to be that horsepower is determined by mechanical output.”

InSinkErator also provided market research to show that consumers ranked horsepower as one of the top purchasing considerations for garbage disposals, as well as “retailer perspective” indicating that horsepower was “a key differentiating factor”—Lowe’s and Home Depot organize and advertise them by horsepower. “This signals that horsepower is an important—if not primary—distinction used by retailers to market to consumers.” That bolstered “the common sense impression that more horsepower means more efficiency.” Home Depot characterized higher horsepower disposals as “Heavy Duty,” and lower as “Light Duty” and said that “[t]he higher the HP, the better the disposal will run. Food waste will be ground into finer particles and you’ll have fewer jams,” while Lowe’s said that “models with higher HP motors have better sound insulation and run more quietly than basic models.”

And then, in the remedy, the court imposes only a disclaimer remedy that seems quite unlikely to work, and won’t actually correct for the misimpressions given how—as it has already explained—garbage disposals are marketed.

In setting out the injunction, the court states that “Joneca would be free to explain during retailer bids and sales presentations that its products have a certain horsepower input, or alternatively, to explain that InSinkErator’s AC induction motor design requires more output horsepower to provide the same level of performance as Joneca’s PMDC motor. Such is not a hardship, but rather the truth, as Joneca has described it.” But will it need to do so given the actual injunction?

The injunction bars “false and deceptive horsepower claims,” then says that “Any horsepower-related communications to retailers, wholesalers, or other third parties for the purposes of obtaining contracts for the sale of Joneca-made garbage disposal products will include a clear and conspicuous disclaimer stating: ‘Horsepower claimed on package does not indicate motor output or motor power applied for processing.’” But they’ll still be shelved in stores as 1 HP motors next to InSinkErator’s 1 HP motors, if I understand this correctly. (The order says Joneca can’t assist, etc. the continued display of false and deceptive claims in stores—are the general statements about HP on Lowe’s and Home Depot’s sites, or the stocking of the parties’ products side by side, encompassed in that?)  Even if the sticker is conspicuous, it seems at best contradictory with the store placement; will consumers then think that’s also true of InSinkErators? Making matters worse, if the motors on the parties’ products work differently, then they aren’t actually fully comparable just on horsepower, are they? What exactly is a consumer supposed to make of all this?

I’m left wondering: why not at least explain why the court didn’t require Joneca to label its product with what the court had just held was the only truthful measure of HP with respect to motors in this context—output?