McDonald's and Wendy's win lawsuit over claims of misleading burger sizes
McDonald’s and Wendy’s have defeated a lawsuit claiming that they were not making some of their burgers as big, thick, and juicy as advertised.
On Saturday, US District Judge Hector Gonzalez in Brooklyn decided to grant the fast food giants’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit put forth by Justin Chimienti, a resident of Suffolk County, New York.
Chimienti filed the lawsuit against McDonald’s and Wendy’s in May, alleging that the burger sizes in their ads for the Big Mac and the Bourbon Bacon Cheeseburger were much larger than the real deal.
McDonald’s Big Mac.(VGV MEDIA/Shutterstock)
According to the decision, Gonzalez didn’t find proof that the fast food chains were serving smaller burgers than advertised.
He didn’t even find proof that Chimienti had seen ads for McDonald’s and Wendy’s burgers he bought.
The lawsuit also claimed that Wendy’s exaggerates the amount of toppings it uses on burgers. Chimienti believed that the burger patties in McDonald’s and Wendy’s advertisements appear 15% to 20% larger because they’re undercooked.
To Chimienti, all of this counted as defrauding customers.
Gonzalez’s decision says that McDonald’s and Wendy’s efforts to make their burgers look bigger and juicer were “no different than other companies’ use of visually appealing images to foster positive associations with their products.”
He added that the fast food chains’ websites shared “prominent, objective information” about the burgers’ weight and caloric content.
Gonzalez also shut down Chimienti’s complaint about the exaggerated toppings.
He said that it’s not misleading to have fewer toppings than Chimienti’s “personally preferred amount.”
The case is an addition to a growing list of fast-food lawsuits. In 2016, a man sued Popeye’s in Mississippi for giving him a spork when he wanted a knife. He alleged that he choked after eating his fried chicken with the utensil.
Back in 2015, Subway was also sued for its foot-long sandwiches not technically being a foot long. The chain decided to settle the case out of court, compensating the complainants involved in the class action lawsuit with half a million US dollars.