In Panelli v. Target Corp., No. 24-6640, (9th Cir. Apr. 17, 2026), the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded a district court’s dismissal of a putative class action alleging that the sale of 100% cotton bedsheets with claimed thread counts of 600 or greater violated California’s consumer protection statutes. The plaintiff alleged that testing showed that the advertised 800-count bedsheets he purchased had a thread count of 288 and that it is physically impossible to achieve greater than 600 thread counts with cotton. The district court dismissed the complaint, finding plaintiff’s allegation of physical impossibility dispositive because no reasonable consumer would interpret the advertising as promising something impossible.
The Ninth Circuit reasoned that the district court misapplied Moore v. Trader Joe’s Co., 4 F.4th 874 (9th Cir. 2021), because the district court should not have considered the context of physical impossibility without first analyzing whether the advertising was ambiguous. Unlike the ambiguous claim at issue in Moore, the Ninth Circuit concluded that the thread count “purports to communicate an objective measurement of a physical aspect of the product” and was not ambiguous.
The Ninth Circuit concluded that the plaintiff adequately alleged a literally false and actionable claim, noting that while some claims may be so clearly false that no reasonable consumer would be deceived, the thread count claim was not so unreasonable or fanciful as to trigger that exception.
The Panelli decision reinforces that “ambiguity” of a challenged advertising statement continues to play a key role in determining the viability of consumer false advertising claims in the Ninth Circuit. A plaintiff who can plausibly allege literal falsity, rather than mere ambiguity or misleadingness, will be in the strongest position to survive a motion to dismiss. Defendants who move to dismiss by relying on context should therefore be certain to include the analytical step of ambiguity in their motion.