Below The Beltway

A Virginia woman sued the milk industry because she gained weight when she consumed dairy products:

Catherine Holmes saw the ads for the so-called “dairy diet” and thought it would be a tasty way to lose a few pounds. After all, she loves buttermilk, yogurt and cheese.

Instead, the Arlington woman says, she gained three pounds on the diet, which dairy companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting. She sued the industry.

But a federal judge has ruled that under Virginia law, Holmes and other people can’t take on the industry in court — only a government entity such as the Virginia attorney general’s office can. The decision last week by U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in Alexandria threw out the lawsuit Holmes filed last year.

In her ruling last Thursday, Brinkema said Virginia consumer protection law allows people to seek monetary damages but not a broad injunction regulating an industry. She did not address the science of the debate, writing that such federal agencies as the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission are better equipped to do so.

An attorney for Holmes vowed yesterday to appeal and file a similar lawsuit in a more consumer-friendly state. “We’re very disappointed,” said Dan Kinburn, general counsel for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which filed the Virginia case on Holmes’s behalf. “This will encourage and assist the dairy industry in making this country fatter and sicker.”

Yea, sure. It’s the dairy industry’s fault we’re all fat.