A federal judge this week dismissed a lawsuit filed by the man who says he invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
Richard Montañez had sued Frito-Lay and its parent company PepsiCo last year, alleging they defamed him and hurt his career by denying his role in creating the popular snack.
Federal Judge John W. Holcomb of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles wrote in his Wednesday ruling that Montañez’s accusations of fraud and defamation were insufficient or lacked “factual support.”
But the battle over the origin story of the spicy junk food will remain in play for now.
Montañez will have the opportunity to amend his lawsuit because “he may be able to cure the deficiencies in his pleading by alleging additional facts,” the judge wrote.
Montañez will have until June 13 to submit an amended complaint.
His lawsuit came in the aftermath of a 2021 Los Angeles Times investigation that questioned his rags-to-riches story that had long circulated the internet and captured the hearts of fans of the snack and immigrant communities.
The story goes that Montañez was working as a janitor at Frito-Lay’s Rancho Cucamonga plant when he dreamed up a version of the Cheeto that would appeal to the Latino community and had the gumption to pitch his idea to an executive.
The Times article cited chronological inconsistencies in Montañez’s story, archival proof of the release of test products and comments by Frito-Lay executives.
According to Montañez’s lawsuit, he grew up in a Southern California migrant labor camp sharing an 800-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment with his parents and 10 siblings. He got the janitor job in the mid-1970s, and a decade later he and his wife experimented in their kitchen to create the new snack.
In his lawsuit, he explained that he met resistance working with the research and development team while creating a spicy seasoning for mass production.
“Dissatisfied that Mr. Montañez — a poor, uneducated Mexican plant worker and janitor — had successfully developed a new product, Frito-Lay’s R&D personnel completely shut out Mr. Montañez from the development process,” the lawsuit said.
Montañez climbed PepsiCo’s ranks, becoming the company’s vice president of multicultural marketing and sales before retiring in 2019.
In his lawsuit, Montañez said that the companies had sent him touring the country delivering inspiring talks in elite academic and business settings, and that as a result PepsiCo had “reaped tremendous benefits by affirmatively holding [Montañez] out as the inventor of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.”
But Holcomb, the judge, wrote that Montañez could not argue that PepsiCo and Frito-Lay’s profiting off the premise that he invented the snack was unjust since Montañez “mutually benefitted from Defendants’ decades-long support.”
Montañez’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Times staff writer Sandra McDonald contributed to this report.
