SAN FRANCISCO (LN) — A federal judge on Wednesday let most of Victoria Joyce's consumer-fraud class action against Guthy-Renker, LLC survive a motion to dismiss, ruling that her allegations of fake strikethrough prices and sham limited-time deals on the company's subd.com website were pled with enough specificity to proceed under the heightened fraud pleading standard — but dismissed her claims tied to a single add-on product and threw out her breach and equitable-relief theories entirely.
Joyce alleges that Guthy-Renker runs a deceptive discount pricing scheme on www.subd.com by listing false strikethrough prices and fake limited-time sales. She says she purchased a Neck & Face Firming Kit and a Cold Plasma Sub-D+ for $59.95 and $20.00 respectively on or around June 10, 2025, after seeing a $245.50 strikethrough price and a "76% OFF" discount on the site.
U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California held that Joyce's pre-suit investigation — using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to document the Kit's pricing across dozens of dates from January 2023 to September 2025 — was enough to plausibly allege that the $59.95 price was never actually a sale price. The FAL, CLRA, UCL, and negligent misrepresentation claims tied to the Kit cleared the motion.
The Plasma product was a different story. The court held that the complaint contained no factual basis for the assertion that the Plasma's countdown timer simply resets when it expires, ruling that it could not be plausibly inferred that counsel's pre-suit investigation encompassed the Plasma product, which was not explicitly or implicitly referenced in the complaint's pricing table, and that no other factual allegations supported the inference that the Plasma offer was perpetual. All claims tied to the Plasma were dismissed.
Joyce's breach of contract and breach of express warranty claims were also thrown out, but on a different ground: notice. Joyce mailed a pre-suit demand to Guthy-Renker's California headquarters on November 12, 2025, and postal tracking showed delivery on November 17 — three days before she filed suit. Lin held that three days was insufficient to give Guthy-Renker's general counsel time to analyze the demand, assess its strength, and determine what compensation to offer, citing a district court decision that had held even four days too short in a case against Apple.
Guthy-Renker's economic loss doctrine argument fared no better. Lin held that negligent misrepresentation is a subspecies of fraud that falls outside the doctrine where the claim can be established independently of the parties' contractual rights, applying the California Supreme Court's 2024 decision in Rattagan v. Uber Technologies.
Joyce's requests for restitution under the FAL and UCL and for injunctive relief under the CLRA were also cut. Lin held that the complaint's assertion that legal remedies are inadequate because the standard that governs restitution is different than the standard that governs damages was conclusory boilerplate that failed to allege any factual basis for finding a legal remedy incomplete. The injunctive relief claim failed because Joyce never alleged she would try to buy the Kit or Plasma again.
Joyce has until May 20, 2026 to file an amended complaint addressing the identified deficiencies — though the order bars her from adding new claims or parties without leave of court.