United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit · 2019-06-28
Case and law context
Role: applied; posture: Interlocutory appeal from denial of preliminary injunction on challenged advertisements; findings concern likelihood of success, not final merits.; result: claimant-lost; claim:
Instances and excluded annotation blocks
| Case | Element | Holding and scope | Variant | Exact source quotations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| /f3d/928/0514-01 — United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit · 2019 | Judicial actual-deception or tendency-to-deceive requirement | not Excluded from merits counts applied / procedural basis: no-evidence; count: Woodpecker imagery; subject: count=Woodpecker imagery Reach and persuasion evidence does not establish a false audience takeaway; this is not a holding that materiality failed. | misleading-truth/audience-reach-without-takeaway | Under the Lanham Act, if a statement is "literally false," we presume that it actually deceived consumers. Wysong Corp. v. APN , Inc. , 889 F.3d 267, 270-71 (6th Cir. 2018). If a statement is merely "misleading," then Louisiana-Pacific must prove that it deceived a "significant portion" of reasonable consumers. Id. at 271.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [4125:4449] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68.Louisiana-Pacific adduced no such proof, instead relying on (1) testimony that Hardie intended the advertisements to affect consumer-purchasing decisions, (2) documentation that the campaign's advertisements reached a large audience, and (3) a Hardie study demonstrating that consumers rely on manufacturers' websites for product information, and that an ad featuring a woodpecker nesting in a hole would be more likely to persuade consumers than just a photo of a hole.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [7731:8201] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68.Louisiana-Pacific therefore failed to carry its burden that the woodpecker imagery was misleading.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [8457:8555] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68. |
| /f3d/928/0514-01 — United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit · 2019 | False or misleading factual representation | not Excluded from merits counts applied / procedural basis: no-evidence; count: Woodpecker imagery; subject: count=Woodpecker imagery Insufficient preliminary-injunction showing of literal falsity; procedural scope prevents ingestion as final merits failure. | literal-falsity/retouched-woodpecker-image | The agency incorporated one photograph into Hardie's "No Wood Is Good" campaign-sharpening the image's colors, darkening the interior of the hole to make it appear deeper, and superimposing a woodpecker.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [4979:5182] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68.Louisiana-Pacific's corporate representative testified that the company had never tested its siding's woodpecker resilience, had no data to support any assertion "that our product is resistant to some level against woodpecker damage," and "can't say [woodpecker damage] won't happen .... [I]t's possible."Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [5955:6260] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68.Reasonable consumers know that marketing involves some level of exaggeration, and some amount of digital retouching to tell a story.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [5426:5558] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68.Because Louisiana-Pacific proffered no evidence that the photographs misrepresent woodpecker behavior, see Innovation Ventures, LLC v. N.V.E., Inc. , 694 F.3d 723, 735-36 (6th Cir. 2012), it failed to satisfy its burden of proving literal falsity.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [6664:6911] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68. |
| /f3d/928/0514-01 — United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit · 2019 | False or misleading factual representation | not Excluded from merits counts applied / procedural basis: law; count: Pests Love It headline; subject: count=Pests Love It headline Only the headline is classified as puffery; the separate damage assertion is testable but ambiguous on this preliminary record. | puffery/pests-love-it | Just above the photo of the woodpecker, Hardie's advertisement notes that "Pests Love [engineered wood]," and, in smaller print, that such siding is "[s]ubject to damage caused by woodpeckers, termites and other pests that can harm wood."Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [8707:8945] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68.Puffery protects statements that reasonable consumers would not interpret as reliably factual.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [9278:9372] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68.The district court found that the headline "Pests Love It," rather than literal falsity, amounts to puffery-unverifiable exaggeration to prove a point. We agree.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [9116:9277] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68. |
| /f3d/928/0514-01 — United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit · 2019 | False or misleading factual representation | not Excluded from merits counts applied / procedural basis: no-evidence; count: Subject to damage sentence; subject: count=Subject to damage sentence No final merits ruling; consumer interpretation of damage was not shown unambiguous. | literal-falsity/ambiguous-termite-damage | But Louisiana-Pacific's own experts admitted that grazing results in some damage. And Louisiana-Pacific's warranty on its engineered-wood siding explicitly excludes non-structural termite damage.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [11773:11968] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68.Our review thus requires that we ask whether reasonable consumers would interpret Hardie's use of the word "damage" to unambiguously mean structural damage.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [11969:12125] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68.Thus, though testable, Louisiana-Pacific has not carried its burden to prove the claim literally false here.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [13060:13168] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68. |
| /f3d/928/0514-01 — United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit · 2019 | Remedy-specific proof | not Excluded from merits counts applied / procedural basis: law The appellate court declined to reconsider the other injunction factors after the likelihood-of-success failure. Liability and permanent relief remain unresolved. | preliminary-injunction/no-likelihood-of-success | But our cases warn that a court must not issue a preliminary injunction where the movant presents no likelihood of merits success.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [3233:3363] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68.Thus, the court's refusal to enter an injunction here could not amount to an abuse of its discretion. We AFFIRM.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [14359:14471] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68. |
Court interpretations recorded from this case
interpretation
Under the Lanham Act, if a statement is "literally false," we presume that it actually deceived consumers. Wysong Corp. v. APN , Inc. , 889 F.3d 267, 270-71 (6th Cir. 2018). If a statement is merely "misleading," then Louisiana-Pacific must prove that it deceived a "significant portion" of reasonable consumers. Id. at 271.
/f3d/928/0514-01 — United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit · 2019
Under the Lanham Act, if a statement is "literally false," we presume that it actually deceived consumers. Wysong Corp. v. APN , Inc. , 889 F.3d 267, 270-71 (6th Cir. 2018). If a statement is merely "misleading," then Louisiana-Pacific must prove that it deceived a "significant portion" of reasonable consumers. Id. at 271.Source:
docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_928.jsonl#/f3d/928/0514-01; Unicode character offsets [4125:4449] (end exclusive); SHA-256 581e8755e34bfb0778a01907d2df14e6053429105939aa3f3ee40fe1c1d76a68.Louisiana-Pacific applies a presumption for literal falsity but demands audience evidence for a misleading statement; dissemination or intent to persuade alone does not prove deception. Injunction versus damages posture affects proof of injury and relief.