Footlong eaters sued Subway.
During 2013, an Australian teenager posted on Facebook a picture of his 11-inch Subway Footlong. Feeling cheated (I guess), two New Jersey guys sued, others followed, and we wound up with a class action suit. Subway said the problem was inconsistently stretched bread. Eventually a court threw out the case. (An attorney said that everyone ate the evidence.)
Now, Subway is back in court.
The Subway Tuna Suit
This time the plaintiffs said their tuna sub had no tuna. Then they added that Subway’s false advertising “misled” customers. Responding, Subway said its sub has 100 percent cooked tuna. While Inside Edition agreed, a NY Times DNA test found none. The NY Times said there were two possibilities. Either there was no tuna or the fish could not be identified because of heavy processing.
On October 7th, it all came to an end (until the next case). The court said the plaintiffs needed to be more specific. They granted Subway’s motion to dismiss the case.
Below, an Insider reporter hows us a “stingy portion” of tuna in a Subway six-inch sub:
Our Bottom Line: Thinking at the Margin
As most economists tell us, everything happens at the margin. Defined as where we decide to do extra after weighing cost and benefit, the margin is a line between where we are and where we might be. A snooze alarm moves the margin to extra sleep. Similarly, when Congress cuts taxes or a driver accelerates beyond the speed limit, the decision to do less or more is at the margin.
You can see that all of the controversy surrounding Subway is also at the margin. They decide if a footlong will get an extra half inch and how much tuna to mix with their mayo. Returning to our title, we solve the mystery at the margin.
The NY Times described the Subway tuna case while Insider and the Courthouse News Service presented its resolution. Meanwhile, at econlife we detailed all of Subway’s court challenges. However, if you just want to see what the judge had to say, do take a look here.
