(Bloomberg) -- California said a state judge who earlier this year ruled that coffee requires a cancer warning is too biased to oversee a new lawsuit that challenges the state's proposal to exempt the beverage from the requirement.
The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment on Monday filed a request to disqualify Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle.
Separately, a California Court of Appeals last week stayed the third phase of a trial before Berle, scheduled to start Oct. 15, on what coffee retailers and brewers would have to pay for failing to warn consumers that coffee contains a chemical known to cause cancer.
The same plaintiffs' lawyer who sued Starbucks Corp., Target Corp., 7-Eleven Inc. and Whole Foods Market, among others, for their failure to comply with the state's required warnings, last month sued the state after it proposed to spare coffee from the rule because the amount of acrylamide in coffee isn't a health risk.
To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
Essential Business Intelligence, Continuous LIVE TV, Sharp Market Insights, Practical Personal Finance Advice and Latest Stories — On NDTV Profit.
