Seems fishy: recently a federal judge ruled that a lawsuit alleging that Subway tuna sandwiches either "partially or wholly" lack tuna can proceed in court. Plaintiff Nilma Amin says Subway misled consumers when it claimed that its sandwiches contain "tuna" and "100% tuna".

A UCLA marine biologist quoted in Amin's lawsuit says that 19 of the 20 samples the lab tested showed "no detectable tuna DNA sequences whatsoever". The testing allegedly showed that all 20 samples had chicken DNA, 11 had pork DNA, and 7 had cattle DNA.

Amin's suit states that customers who order a tuna sandwich shouldn't receive a sandwich with "other fish species, animal products, or miscellaneous products."

Amin is accusing Subway of fraud and violating consumer protection laws. She is seeking class-action status and a jury trial for her case, and is seeking compensation from the restaurant chain including restitution, punitive damages, and "disgorgement of all ill-gotten gains".

Subway argued, in part, that the suit should be dismissed because anyone ordering a sandwich in its stores would see that cross-contact can happen between different ingredients.

"Subway serves 100% tuna," a Subway spokesperson said to NPR. "We are disappointed the Court felt it couldn't dismiss the plaintiffs' reckless and improper lawsuit at this stage."

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar denied Subway's request to dismiss the suit because Amin's claims have not been sufficiently addressed by Subway.

"Although it is possible that Subway's explanations are the correct ones, it is also possible that these allegations refer to ingredients that a reasonable consumer would not reasonably expect to find in a tuna product," Judge Tigar wrote in his ruling.

Amin isn't the only one claiming that Subway's "100% tuna" is closer to 0% tuna. In June of last year, The New York Times (NYT) reported that "no amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample" it had sent to be tested against five tuna species. According to the lab at the time, it couldn't "identify the species" in the samples.

"There's two conclusions," a lab spokesperson told NYT. "One, it's so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn't make an identification. Or we got some and there's just nothing there that's tuna."

In response, Subway said that the test the NYT lab used isn't reliable enough to identify tuna in processed products.

While Judge Tigar denied Subway's request to dismiss Amin's lawsuit, he did dismiss the claims of Amin's fellow-plaintiff. She had failed to prove that she herself had purchased a Subway tuna sandwich. Amin, on the other hand, claims to have ordered more than 100 Subway tuna products between 2013 and 2019.

Tigar dismissed a part of Amin's lawsuit because he said that the suit was arguing that tuna products should contain 100% tuna and nothing else. The judge said that tuna sandwiches containing products like egg and bread is a "fact of life" that reasonable consumers would expect.

Amin has three weeks to respond to the partial dismissal. After that, the lawsuit will move forward.

"We are confident that Subway will prevail when the court has an opportunity to consider all the evidence," Subway said in a statement.