Evola
Brown
Two Madison County residents have filed a putative class action suit against the company that owns Blimpie restaurants, alleging the sandwich shop does not stack select subs with double portions of meat despite such claims in its advertisements.
Plaintiffs Ronald Williams and Jennifer Clayton claim they are regular patrons of Blimpie restaurants and have both on multiple occasions ordered the super stacked turkey and bacon sandwich.
Recently, however, they discovered the sub does not contain double the meat of regular sandwiches as the restaurant chain advertises, according to the complaint filed Feb. 12 in Madison County Circuit Court.
They will be represented by Mark L. Brown and Robert J. Evola of LakinChapman in Wood River.
Williams and Clayton back up their claim with two arguments. First, they say Blimpie does not have a regular turkey and bacon sandwich, so it is impossible to double the amount of meat when there is no normal sub to compare it to.
In addition, Blimpie does offer multiple other regular turkey sandwiches, but the super stacked turkey and bacon sandwich does not offer double the number of turkey slices that are on other turkey sandwiches, the suit states.
In other cases, the amount of protein found in the super stacked sandwiches is not double that of the protein found in the sandwiches' regular counterpart, the complaint says.
"The 12" Super Stacked BLIMPIE Best contains only 73 grams of protein," the suit states. "While this is approximately double the protein of the 6" version of the Super Stacked BLIMPIE Best (i.e., 37 grams), as expected, it is far less than double the protein of that contained in the 12"regular version of the BLIMPIE Best (i.e., 50 grams). The 6" Super Stacked BLIMPIE Best likewise contains less than double the protein as compared to its 6" regular counterpart (i.e., 37 grams vs. 25 grams)."
The plaintiffs claim Blimpie violated the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practice Act by misrepresenting that its sandwiches contained double portions of meat, by failing to include double portions of meat on the selected sandwiches and by failing to disclose the sandwiches do not contain double portions of meat.
Because of the restaurant's misrepresentation, the plaintiffs say they and others have incurred damages of no more than $75,000 per person.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to certify the case as a class action. In addition, they are seeking unspecified damages, a permanent injunction preventing the restaurant from advertising the fact that its sandwiches contain double portions of meat without including the extra meat in them, costs, attorneys' fees and other relief the court deems just.
Madison County Circuit Court case number: 10-L-166.