Starkist class action settlement gives consumers refund in cash or tuna

Starkist Tuna settled a class action lawsuit for under filling its five-ounce tuna by few tenths of an ounce, and is now required to pay back consumers with cash or tuna.

Consumers who live in the United States and bought a five-ounce tuna from Starkist from February 19, 2009 to October 31, 2014 can claim Chunk Light Tuna in Water, Chunk Light Tuna in Oil, Solid White in Water, and Solid White in Oil.

Consumers have to say on penalty of perjury that they indeed bought tuna during those times when they file a claim since they definitely no longer have the receipts.

Those who want to claim can visit TunaLawsuit.com, which is very descriptive. The consumers can get $25 to $50 worth of tuna. According to Federal Law, a five-ounce tuna must have 2.84 to 3.23 ounce of tuna, depending on the type of tuna.

However, the suit claims that StarKist cans only have a few tenths of an ounce less than the required ounce by the Federal Law.

The case was filed two-and-a-half years ago by a consumer who noticed that five-ounce of Starkist cans were deliberately under-filled. People wouldn't usually notice it, but the short-changing strategy made the tuna company a lot of money. Through this strategy, the company can fill out millions of other cans.

This tactic backfired as the case was settled. Starkist doesn't admit fault, but it still has to give back to the consumers what is due to them. This leads to a very poor month for Starkist.

The news comes amid accusations of colluding to fix prices by various tuna brands. In other news, US co-packing agreement among plants owned by Thai Union Frozen Products and Bumble Bee Foods is included in a lawsuit accusing these companies of price fixing on canned tuna. Included in the lawsuit is Starkist, which is owned by Dongwon Industries.