Ben & Jerry’s Foundation joins lawsuit challenging The Magnum Ice Cream Company

Ben & Jerry's ice cream shop in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, file)

The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, a non-profit funded by the ice cream brand, said on Monday it had won a court ruling to join a lawsuit challenging its ultimate parent company, The Magnum Ice Cream Company over contractual obligations and independence.

Unilever retains a 19.9 per cent stake in Magnum, which formed when the consumer goods conglomerate spun off its ice cream unit in December.

Directors from the independent board of Ben & Jerry’s, now owned by Magnum, have challenged the company’s plans to appoint new directors and accused it of corporate overreach.

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Since 2024, Vermont-based Ben & Jerry’s and its independent board have fought Unilever, and now Magnum, in a U.S. District Court in New York over what they say are efforts to undermine the brand’s social mission and the board’s autonomy.

The foundation said it decided to join the lawsuit after Magnum stopped providing it with funding and described the court’s ruling as an important step in ensuring the foundation can defend its independence.

“This is about more than a contract, it’s about whether a corporation can weaponise a governance structure and withhold funding when prior commitments and values become inconvenient,” President of the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation Board of Trustees Liz Bankowski said in a statement.

Magnum said it was fully committed to Ben & Jerry’s, including continuing to fund the foundation.

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“The recent steps to update Ben & Jerry’s corporate governance are wholly aligned with the merger agreement and standard corporate governance across the organization; nothing more than that,” Magnum said in a statement. “Suggesting our actions are anything more is just not true; they are not and never have been.”

The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, set up in 1985, uses contributions from Ben & Jerry’s to make donations to other non-profit organizations focused on issues ranging from racial equity to environmental protection.

(Reporting by Alexander Marrow; editing by Barbara Lewis)