Eaten at Subway Since 2003? You Just Won a Settlement

What happens when a footlong isn't a foot long?
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 21, 2015 2:24 PM CDT
Updated Oct 25, 2015 9:49 AM CDT
Ever Eaten at Subway? You Just Won a Settlement
Is this footlong really a foot long? Subway agrees to settlement over sandwich-length lawsuit.   (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Subway is back in the news over a controversial figure that appears in its advertising—and thankfully we're not talking about Jared again. No, this time the culprit is Subway's footlong subs that aren't always a foot long. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports a federal judge agreed to a preliminary settlement this month for a class action lawsuit on behalf of everyone who purchased a sandwich at Subway since 2003. Unfortunately, the tens of millions of us that applies to won't get any money—or even a free sub. Instead, Subway has agreed to take steps to “help ensure that the bread sold to customers is either 6 or 12 inches long," according to the Wall Street Journal. And USA Today reports Subway will no longer train employees to have "a small tolerance in the size of a Footlong sandwich."

The lawsuit on behalf of what is possibly the largest number of plaintiffs ever started in 2012, when one brave Subway customer complained on social media that his footlong sub was more like 11 inches, the Journal Sentinel reports. That was followed by a number of lawsuits from around the country that were eventually combined. As part of the settlement, nine customers who participated in the lawsuit could get up to $1,000, but Subway doesn't have to admit to any misleading advertising about the length of its sandwiches. You might think this sounds like a lot of work to get an extra inch of Chicken & Bacon Ranch Melt, but attorney Thomas Zimmerman disagrees. "As a result of this litigation, Subway enacted some significant quality-control measures," he says. (More Subway stories.)

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