OAKLAND, Calif. (Legal Newsline) - Class action lawyers knew their "mystery meat" lawsuit against Subway over its tuna would fail and must be punished for causing the company to rack up more than $600,000 in attorney fees, the restaurant chain is arguing.
Subway's May 4 motion for sanctions comes as plaintiff Nilima Amin and her attorneys decided to drop the case after more than two years of litigation. It started in January 2021 when attorneys like Mark Lanier and Shalini Dogra sued, claiming tuna at Subway was a "mixture of various concoctions that do not constitute tuna."
California federal judge Jon Tigar dismissed the case for not being specific enough later in 2021 but allowed attorneys to amend their complaint. He later denied the company's motion to dismiss one of those amended complaints, though he admitted "it is possible that Subway's explanations are the correct ones."
Subway ultimately provided documents that showed its tuna is real, adding records detailing "the exact location in the ocean where the fish were caught."
"Over two years after they filed this class action alleging fabricated and reckless claims that Subway's tuna is not tuna, the plaintiff's lawyers across four law firms seek to abandon the lawsuit now that they are being forced to actually prove their allegations," Subway's lawyers wrote.
"Counsel had more than ample opportunity to conduct due diligence and withdraw this meritless lawsuit at the pleading stage, well before it proceeded to discovery and class certification."
Subway said it debunked the various theories in early 2021 and warned that it would seek sanctions if the lawyers continued to file amended complaints, of which there were ultimately three.
It calls the lawyers tactics "bad faith litigation" that caused Subway to incur $617,000 in attorneys fees, plus other various costs. It also suffered harm to its business and goodwill and public ridicule as a result of media coverage, it says.
"(I)t is far too late for the plaintiff's counsel to walk away from the damage they have caused with no ramifications," the motion says. "There have been real and serious consequences to counsel's frivolous lawsuit and reckless allegations."
Subway calls the case part of a "disturbing trend" of class action lawyers who file meritless cases only to extort settlements.
"Counsel should not now be allowed to simply walk away from the burning building after all of the harm they have caused," Subway says.
Much of the motion focuses on the actions of Dogra, of Dogra Law Group in Santa Monica, who is alleged to have lied before the court earlier this year.
Subway says it received her discovery responses on a Sunday, Feb. 19, but they only included two documents out of 30 requested by Subway. There was a heavily redacted credit card bill with no details and the plaintiff's resume, Subway says, totaling only 15 pages.
Some responses asserted objections, though Subway contends Dogra waived her chance to file objections to its discovery requests nine days earlier.
Magistrate Judge Lisa Cisneros ordered copies by March 21, but Dogra missed the deadline. A declaration submitted six days after said she had conversations with Subway lawyer Christina Wong "in early February" about Dogra's need for more time to respond to discovery requests.
"These representations were false, as the first time Ms. Wong met or spoke with Ms. Dogra or any counsel for the plaintiff was on Feb. 21, after the plaintiff's discovery responses were already past due,' the motion says.
Judge Cisneros said at a March 30 hearing it was hard to have faith in Dogra because "she blew off the deadline." She added, "I kind of wonder whether or not I have confidence in counsel overall for Plaintiffs."
Cisneros ordered the two sides to compromise on the lack of discovery responses from Dogra by April 5, but Dogra and her legal team told the Court on April 4 that they were dropping the case.
Subway says it was to avoid submitting a declaration of good cause for their discovery abuses. The class action lawyers also failed to find an expert for their case, as was required by April 3.