- Subway and a plaintiff have agreed to dismiss a lawsuit casting doubt on what its tuna contains.
- Claims included that the tuna contained no tuna and that it had traces of other animal DNA.
- Subway has vigorously defended its tuna and has asked the court to sanction the plaintiff’s lawyers.
A lawsuit casting doubt on what Subway’s tuna contains has been dismissed around 30 months after it was first filed.
The class-action lawsuit, filed in January 2021, initially claimed that Subway’s tuna products “entirely lack any trace of tuna” and instead are made up of “a mixture of various concoctions.” The two plaintiffs amended their claims in June to instead allege that Subway didn’t serve customers the 100% sustainably-caught skipjack and yellowfin tuna it advertised.
That same month, The New York Times published a bombshell report in which it revealed that it had sent some of Subway’s tuna to a commercial lab and was told that “no amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample,” leaving the lab unable to identify the species.
Further amendments to the lawsuit claimed that testing showed that Subway’s tuna contained detectable traces of chicken, pork, and cattle DNA.
Subway has vigorously defended its tuna, saying it buys only wild-caught tuna from fisheries with stocks that aren’t overfished. In response to the test commissioned by The Times, the chain said that tuna DNA can’t always be detected in cooked tuna and that the finding “absolutely doesn’t mean the sample that was tested contained zero tuna.”
One of the plaintiffs withdrew from the lawsuit. In April, Nilima Amin, the remaining plaintiff, requested for the lawsuit to be dismissed without prejudice, saying that she had severe morning sickness and couldn’t devote her time to the legal battle.
Subway’s lawyers said that they doubted this was the real reason Amin wanted to dismiss the lawsuit.
“What is far more likely is that the lawyers finally recognized that Subway was not going to simply pay the windfall settlement that they hoped to get by constructing a highprofile shakedown before they would have to prove their claims,” they wrote.
Subway also asked the court to sanction Amin’s seven attorneys “to prevent and deter them from engaging in further improper litigation conduct and abusing the class action mechanism,” arguing that the lawsuit was “frivolous” and had been changed too many times and that the lawyers should have filed to dismiss much sooner.
The sandwich chain asked for more than $600,000 in sanctions to cover both its legal fees and the costs it occurred addressing the negative publicity around its tuna.
“It is far too late for the plaintiff’s counsel to walk away from the damage they have caused with no ramifications,” Subway’s lawyers said, adding that the lawsuit had subjected Subway and its franchisees “to public ridicule, reputational harm and loss of business.”
Amin’s counsel said that she had filed the lawsuit in good faith.
Subway and Amin have now “come to agreement regarding dismissing the case with prejudice,” meaning Amin can’t refile the same claim again in that court, according to court records from Thursday. The judge hasn’t yet issued a ruling on the sanctions.
“This reckless lawsuit has always lacked merit,” Subway said.
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