We are pleased to spotlight Ammad Bajwa, Associate Attorney at Treehouse Law, LLP in Santa Monica, California, as this month’s featured member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Lawyers’ Association.
Though just over a year into practice, Ammad has already taken the lead on federal class action briefs, presented oral argument in federal court, and gone toe-to-toe with some of the largest consumer brands in the country, all in service of a simple idea: when a company makes a promise on its label, it should actually be true.
In one case, he is challenging Mondelez, the maker of Oreo, over its front-label claim that its cocoa is “100% sustainably sourced.” He alleges, in reality, sustainable and conventional cocoa beans are freely mixed during processing, making it impossible to trace whether the cocoa in any given Oreo actually came from a sustainable source, let alone 100% of it. When Mondelez moved to consolidate the case with a separate lawsuit, which would have effectively killed his client’s claim, Ammad drafted the opposition, and the court agreed, denying consolidation.
He also helped defeat a motion to dismiss against Igloo, which marketed coolers as “biodegradable” and “Made in the USA” despite alleged evidence to the contrary. And he helped defeat a motion to dismiss against Pure Instinct, a fragrance brand that went viral after appearing on Netflix’s Love Is Blind. Pure Instinct markets its products as containing “human-compatible pheromones” capable of attracting other people, but humans don’t actually have a functioning organ to detect pheromones. He is also currently litigating cases against Van Leeuwen, whose “Honeycomb” ice cream contains no actual honey or honeycomb, and against Jergens, alleging that its “Skin Firming” lotion is not a cosmetic but an unapproved drug under California law.
His work also touches on areas like challenging misleading “natural” claims on products containing synthetic ingredients, deceptive subscription models, cosmetics sold in containers designed to look fuller than they are, and fruit snacks that slap “Excellent Source of Vitamins” on what may be essentially candy, to name a few.
Ammad earned his J.D. from UCLA School of Law on a full merit scholarship, where he received the Masin Family Gold Award, and graduated magna cum laude from UCLA as an undergraduate.
We are proud to count Ammad among the members of AMLA.
