Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc.

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Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc., 88 F.Supp.2d 116 (S.D.N.Y. 1996), more widely known as the Pepsi Points Case, is a famous case tried in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1996, in which the plaintiff, John Leonard, sued PepsiCo, Inc. in an effort to enforce an "offer" to redeem 7,000,000 Pepsi Points for an AV-8 Harrier II jump jet, which Pepsi had shown in a televised commercial. The plaintiff did not in fact collect 7,000,000 Pepsi Points, but instead sent a check for $700,008.50 as permitted by the contest rules. Leonard had 15 existing points, paid $0.10 a point for the remaining 6,999,985 points and a $10 shipping and handling fee. The claim alleged both breach of contract and fraud. The case was finally decided in 1999. Among other claims made, Leonard claimed that a federal judge was incapable of deciding on the matter, and that instead the decision had to be made by a jury consisting of members of "the Pepsi generation," to whom the advertisement would allegedly constitute an offer.^[1]

The court, presided over by Judge Kimba Wood, rejected Leonard's claims and denied recovery on three grounds.

It was found that the advertisement featuring the jet did not constitute an offer.
The court found that even if the advertisement had been an offer, no reasonable person could have believed that the company seriously intended to convey a jet worth $22 million for under a million dollars.
The value of the alleged contract meant that it fell under the provisions of the statute of frauds, but the Statute's requirement for writing between the parties was not fulfilled, so a contract had not been formed.