SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) – A class action lawsuit against Subway that alleges its tuna is actually a mystery blend of meat will get to move forward.
U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar on July 8 found the complaint by attorney Mark Lanier of Texas and Shalini Dogra in California adequately alleged consumers could be misled into buying a product that wasn’t tuna at all.
Subway has argued that any non-tuna DNA found during testing must come from the eggs in mayonnaise or from contact with other ingredients.
“Although it is possible that Subway’s explanations are the correct ones, it is also possible that these allegations refer to ingredients that a reasonable consumer would not reasonably expect to find in a tuna product,” Tigar wrote.
“Moreover, even if the court accepted Subway’s statement that all non-tuna DNA must be caused by cross-contact with other Subway ingredients, it still would not dismiss the complaint on this basis. Whether, and to what extent, a reasonable consumer expects cross-contact between various Subway ingredients is a question of fact.”
Tigar did throw out one theory pushed by the plaintiffs – that a product called “tuna” would contain tuna and nothing else. But he refused to agree with the company that the plaintiffs failed to show why Subway’s statements are false.
“(The complaint) states that the ‘tuna’ description s false either because there is no tuna in the products and/or because there are ingredients that a reasonable person would not expect to find in an item described as ‘tuna,’” Tigar wrote. “That is enough.”
The original lawsuit, filed in January 2021, said eaters were fed “a mixture of various concoctions that do not constitute tuna, yet have been blended together by (Subway) to imitate the appearance of tuna.”