Pret A Manger Customers Near Settlement of Slack-Fill Wrap Class Action

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Representatives for customers in a Pret A Manger packaging class action lawsuit have asked a judge to pause proceedings, saying the food chain and the customers are reaching a settlement.

On Tuesday, plaintiffs’ counsel asked U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to halt proceedings for a class action lawsuit that claims that Pret A Manger’s wraps are packaged to look larger than they are.

According to a letter submitted to Judge Kaplan, the customers who filed the Pret A Manger underfilled wraps class action lawsuit are approaching a settlement with the restaurant chain.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys requested that Judge Kaplan dismiss the wrap packaging lawsuit and reopen it in 30 days if the customers and the chain haven’t submitted their final notice of dismissal.

The Pret A Manger class action lawsuit was filed in July 2017 by plaintiffs Yee Ting Lau and Jeff Alexander who claimed that the company intentionally misled customers into believing that the company’s wraps were larger than they really were.

Allegedly, the company did this by packaging the wraps in a container that left more than an inch of empty space between the two halves of the wrap, and covering the space with the container’s cardboard packaging.

According to Lau and Alexander, they purchased the wraps because they believed they were a certain size, and when they opened the packaging, they discovered that the wraps were significantly smaller.

The Pret A Manger class action states that the company was aware of this packaging issue and misled customers in order to entice them into purchasing the product.

Lau and Alexander claim that they and other consumers were financially injured by the company because they would not have purchased the wrap or would not have paid as much for it had they known that the wrap was smaller than advertised.

This move to find a settlement agreement followed a previous trimming of the Pret A Manger class action lawsuit.

On Sept. 28, 2018, Judge Kaplan dismissed two out of the four claims brought forward by the customers. Judge Kaplan dismissed one of the customers’ claims for injunctive relief and one for fraud.

Pret A Manger did make a bid to have another claim dismissed, but Judge Kaplan denied this bid, preserving a request for damages for violations of New York’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and violations of New York’s law prohibiting false advertising.

In their initial Pret A Manger class action, Lau and Alexander’s said they would purchase the wraps again if they could be assured that the misrepresentation would not continue and that they were getting what they were paid for.

In response, Judge Kaplan stated that “rather than demonstrate the plaintiffs’ intent to buy Pret wraps in the future — and therefore their risk of future economic harm — these allegations show the plaintiffs’ resistance to engaging in such a commercial transaction again. On these facts, there is no sufficient basis for incurring that plaintiffs ever would seek to purchase a Pret wrap again as long as the status quo persists.”

In October 2017, Pret A Manger moved to have the wrap class action lawsuit dismissed entirely, saying that they could not make class action claim because they themselves said that fewer than half of the wraps the restaurant served were underfilled.

However, the judge determined that because the suit had to do with packaging, not with the wraps themselves, the Pret A Manger class action lawsuit could continue.

Lau and Alexander are represented by C.K. Lee and Anne Seelig of Lee Litigation Group PLLC.

The Pret A Manger Sandwich Wrap Class Action Lawsuit is Yee Ting Lau v. Pret A Manger (USA) Limited, et al., Case No. 1:17-cv-05775, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.