On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that juice company Pom Wonderful LLC can sue Coca-Cola Co. for falsely advertising its Minute Maid Pomegranate Blueberry Flavored Blend of Five Juices product.

The decision was made in an 8-0 opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, Wall Street Journal reports. According to Kennedy, Pom Wonderful, which specializes in pomegranate juice, can sue Coco-Cola because the comany's spin on pomegranate blueberry juice only has 0.3 percent pomegranate juice and 0.2 percent blueberry juice, according to Washington Post. The rest of the drink is mostly apple and grape juice, at a whopping 99.4 percent, according to WSJ.

Pom Wonderful filed a lawsuit in 2008 under federal trademark law, which allows companies to sue other companies that are threatening their profits through deceptive product presentation. WSJ reports that Pom Wonderful has been backed by consumer groups.

Coca-Cola tried to argue that it was immune to a lawsuit because of the Lanham Act, which the company said it obliges by having the drink's label meet stipulations set by the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Kennedy argued that both acts "have co-existed since 1946," as Washington Post reported.

"If Congress had concluded, in light of experience, that Lanham Act suits could interfere with the FDCA, it might well have enacted a provision addressing the issue during these 70 years," Kennedy wrote.

Kennedy also pointed out that Coca-Cola's juice label features the words "pomegranate blueberry" in all caps, taking up two lines, while the words "flavored blend of 5 juices" are written in smaller font.

"...allowing Lanham Act suits takes advantage of synergies among multiple methods of regulation ... to enhance the protection of competitors and consumers," Kennedy wrote.

The ruling overturns that of an appeals court in San Francisco, which said that Pom Wonderful couldn't sue Coca-Cola because it would contradict the Food and Drug Administration's monitoring of juice labels.

During the case, Kathleen Sullivan, Coca-Cola's lawyer, said that the company doesn't believe that "consumers are quite unintelligent as Pom must think they are."

"Don't make me feel bad, because I thought this was pomegranate juice," Kenny responded.
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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.

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