On September 24, 2026, the Honorable Jinsook Ohta of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California struck the nationwide class allegations and dismissed the fraud-based claims in Miller v. Master Lock Company LLC, et al. (Case No. 3:26-cv-03081-JO-SBC), a putative consumer class action against LTL clients Master Lock Company LLC, the Wisconsin-based padlock maker, and its parent company, Fortune Brands Innovations, Inc. The court also dismissed Fortune Brands from the case entirely. The rulings followed the plaintiff’s concession of three of his five claims in response to LTL’s motion.
The plaintiff, a California purchaser, challenged the advertising for a line of Master Lock padlocks and sought to represent a nationwide class on his express warranty and unjust enrichment claims under California law.
Plaintiffs routinely argue that whether California law can govern a nationwide class should wait until class certification. LTL answered that argument with surveys of all fifty states’ express warranty and unjust enrichment laws, showing material differences among them. The plaintiff called LTL’s work “an admirable analysis of the laws of the fifty states” but did not identify a single state whose law matched California’s. The court struck the nationwide class allegations at the pleading stage.
The case now proceeds against Master Lock alone, without a nationwide class. LTL’s David Ammons and Heather Auyang represent Master Lock and Fortune Brands.