A potential nationwide class action lawsuit is being allowed to proceed against the makers of "TGI Friday's Mozzarella Snack Sticks."
A federal judge in Chicago has ruled that the suit -- which claims that TGI Friday's packaged cheese snacks sold in grocery stores are labeled "mozzarella sticks," but they actually only contain cheddar cheese -- can proceed.
The lawsuit claims only fine print on the back of the package reveals the truth about the cheese.
The lawsuit originally accused both TGI Friday's Inc. and the makers of the cheese sticks, Inventure Foods Inc., of misleading customers with the packaging label.
In the suit, plaintiff Amy Joseph claims that she bought a six-pack of the snacks on Amazon.com in January of 2021 for $22.95. The snacks are sold in a bag with a front label that says "Mozzarella Sticks Snacks" with an image of what appears to be mozzarella sticks in a bowl.
Joseph argues that because she only saw the product's front label and Amazon did not provide a product description detailing the ingredients, she believed mistakenly that the product contained mozzarella cheese -- especially given the prominence of the words "mozzarella sticks" on the front label.
Joseph claims that she, and everyone else who purchased the product, is entitled to relief because defendants, "individually and acting jointly, collectively, and in concert together, created, developed, reviewed, authorized, and are responsible for the textual and graphic content on the packaging of the products," including the misrepresentation that the product contained mozzarella cheese.
A U.S. District Judge in late November ruled that the lawsuit could move forward against Inventure Foods but not against TGI Fridays, saying the chain restaurant's only involvement in the product was licensing its trademarked logo.
In its request to dismiss the lawsuit, Inventure Foods argued that because the product is a “shelf-stable, crunchy snack,” it could not feasibly contain mozzarella cheese and no "reasonable" customer would think it actually contained mozzarella.
"If a product does not contain mozzarella cheese, why market it under the TGIF logo, which has a strong correlation to the hot appetizer mozzarella sticks, which presumably contain some quantity of mozzarella cheese," the judge wrote in his ruling.
The judge also pointed out that reasonable consumer standards do not require that a consumer "parse every front label or read every back label before placing groceries in their carts," and that the plaintiff’s interpretation of the product's packaging is a plausible interpretation.
The judge noted that Joseph also pointed out in her complaint that "there are many similar shelf-stable snack products on the market which contain a variety of other types of cheese," which "distinguish themselves from one another based the variety of cheese they contain" and are "prominently displayed on their labels."
Related
Related
