There’s something strange about Subway’s tuna salad sandwiches and wraps, but the menu items just happen to contain no real fish, according to a lawsuit filed against the fast food chain.
What Subway bills as tuna is a “mixture of different concoctions that do not form tuna, but are mixed by defendants to imitate the appearance of tuna,” the complaint said.
The lawsuit was filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of two California residents, Karen Dhanowa and Nilima Amin, alleging that the two were “ tricked into buying food items that were completely lacking the ingredients they reasonably believed that they bought them, “based on the labeling.
“Consumers are consistently misled into purchasing the products for the well-known and / or advertised benefits and features of tuna, when in fact such benefits could not be achieved as the products do not actually contain tuna,” the indictment said.
“Run Tests”
Alex Brown, a lawyer with the Lanier Law Firm who represents Dhanowa and Amin in the case, said they are trying to determine what ingredients are used in Subway’s tuna. “We’re running tests to find out what it is. The lab tests have only told you what it isn’t,” he said in an email to CBS MoneyWatch.
A company spokesperson denied the claims set forth in the lawsuit. “The allegations in the California complaint are simply untrue,” said Maggie Truax, director of Global PR, in an email to CBS MoneyWatch. “Subway supplies 100% cooked tuna to its restaurants, which is mixed with mayonnaise and used in freshly made sandwiches, wraps and salads served to and enjoyed by our guests.”
According to the company’s website, the tuna salad in the chain’s sandwiches is made with pickled tuna flakes, mayonnaise, and a flavor-protecting additive.
“Unfortunately, this lawsuit is part of a trend in which the attorneys for the said plaintiffs are targeting the food industry in an effort to make a name for themselves in that space,” Truax said.
If certified as a class action, the suit could potentially represent thousands of Subway customers who purchased tuna sandwiches or wraps after January 21, 2017 in California, where it has 2,266 locations.
The suit isn’t the first legal dispute to raise questions about Subway’s products. Supreme Court of Ireland in September that the bread Subway uses in its sandwiches cannot legally be called bread because of its high sugar content. And in 2017, an appeals court threw out a class-action settlement over claims made by the chain’s ‘footlong subs’ where an inch shy of the advertised length.