Lawsuit over Subway’s ‘100% tuna’ claim moves forward

A federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit against sandwich chain Subway — over the claim that their tuna sandwiches are “100% tuna” — will be allowed to move forward.

The lawsuit, brought forward by California residents Nilima Amin and Karen Dhanowa, alleged that Subway tricked them “into buying premium priced food dishes based on the representation that the tuna products contained only tuna and no other fish species, animal products or miscellaneous ingredients.”

In the filing, the plaintiffs claimed to have found “no detectable tuna DNA sequences whatsoever” in 19 out of 20 samples of Subway’s tuna. They also claimed that all 20 samples contained sequences of chicken DNA and 11 contained pork, while seven of them contained sequences of cow DNA.

Subway has strongly refuted the accusations, claiming their tuna is 100 percent wild-caught tuna. The company even filed a motion for the court to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice.

While the judge is allowing the lawsuit to stand, he did dismiss Amin’s claim of harm she suffered from Subway’s alleged misleading. He also noted that “reasonable” customers know that tuna salad is not 100% tuna, as it contains mayonnaise, bread and other ingredients.

“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 the plaintiff’s claims are not true. Subway tuna is tuna,” Subway attorney Mark C. Goodman told The Washington Post. “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.”