Richard Montanez v. PepsiCo, Inc.

I. BACKGROUND2

According to the Complaint, Montañez’s life story “is part of the cultural canon.” As the son of a Mexican immigrant, Moñtanez “grew up in a poor migrant labor camp in Southern California, sharing a one-bedroom apartment with his parents and ten siblings.” After he dropped out of school, Montañez found employment as a janitor at Frito-Lay’s plant in Rancho Cucamonga, California.5 In the 1980s, Frito-Lay “implemented a Method and Improvement program,” through which employees “were encouraged to come up with ideas for new products or improvements to existing products.” For each idea that an employee submitted, Frito-Lay would pay that employee $1. Frito-Lay also encouraged employees to “act like owners,” which “empowered” Montañez and “motivated” him “to invent new snacks with certain flavor profiles that would better match the taste palates of the Hispanic community, which had not been well-served by the flavor choices previously available to them.”8 While Montañez was working at Frito-Lay’s Rancho Cucamonga plant, one of the machines used to produce Cheetos broke down, which left a batch of Cheetos

Defs.’ Mot. to Dismiss Pursuant to FRCP 12(b)(6) and…