*A federal judge has agreed that Subway has misled customers by claiming its tuna sandwiches are “100 percent tuna.”
Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar ruled that “a class action suit filed in January 2021 by plaintiff Nilima Amin of Alameda County, California can move forward,” per Complex. The ruling arrives several months after Subway sought to dismiss the suit.
We previously reported that two California women filed a lawsuit against Subway earlier this year, claiming its tuna contains no tuna or any fish.
According to a lawsuit filed against the fast-food chain, Karen Dhanowa and Nilima Amin allege Subway’s tuna is a “mixture of various concoctions that do not constitute tuna, yet have been blended together by defendants to imitate the appearance of tuna.”
READ MORE: New York Times Investigation Confirms Subway Tuna is Mystery Meat
Dhanowa and Amin believe they “were tricked into buying food items that wholly lacked the ingredients they reasonably thought they were purchasing,” based on its labeling, according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, CBS reported.
The New York Times conducted its own investigation. The newspaper used “60 inches’ worth of Subway tuna sandwiches” purchased from three locations in LA, and shipped the frozen meat to a commercial lab for analysis.
The New York Times published the results: “No amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample and so we obtained no amplification products from the DNA. Therefore, we cannot identify the species.”
Dhanowa and Amin’s lawsuit alleges that “Consumers are consistently misled into purchasing the products for the commonly known and/or advertised benefits and characteristics of tuna when in fact no such benefits could be had, given that the products are in fact devoid of tuna,” the suit claims, noting that “independent testing has repeatedly affirmed, the products are made from anything but tuna.”
Subway has dismissed the claims as baseless.
“These claims are meritless,” a Subway representative said in a statement in January. “Tuna is one of our most popular sandwiches. Our restaurants receive 100% wild-caught tuna, mix it with mayonnaise, and serve on a freshly made sandwich to our guests.”
“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,” Judge Tigar said, The Washington Post reports
The judge continued, “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.”
In a statement to The Washington Post, Mark C. Goodman, a lawyer for Subway, said: “While we obviously understand the Court is required to accept the plaintiff’s claims as true at the pleadings stage of the case, the fact is plaintiff’s claims are not true. Subway tuna is tuna,” Goodman wrote in an email.
“We look forward to vindicating Subway once the Court is able to consider the evidence and we are very confident that judgment will be entered for Subway on each of the plaintiff’s claims,” the statement continues.
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