in Newswire Published on April 4, 2017

Lawsuit: Consumers 'Paying for Air' with Slack-Filled Wise Foods Chip Bags

Last Updated on May 8, 2018

Alce et al v. Wise Foods, Inc.

Filed: April 4, 2017 ◆§ 1:17-cv-02402

Two New York consumers are behind a proposed class action that claims Wise Foods, Inc. sells its bagged potato chip products with too much slack-fill, not enough product.

Defendant(s)

Wise Foods

Law(s)

State(s)

New York

Two New York consumers are behind a proposed class action that claims Wise Foods, Inc. unlawfully sells its bagged potato chip products with an unnecessary, non-functional amount of slack fill.

The 49-page complaint defines slack fill as air or filler material contained in the packaging of a product. Slack fill is a necessary part of some manufacturing processes and during the shipment of certain products. Unfortunately, as the lawsuit alleges, when advertisers include excessive amounts of non-functional slack fill in their products, consumers may get shorted.

“When consumers purchase a package of the defendant’s products, they are getting less product than they bargained for, effectively they are tricked into paying for air, because the products contain large amounts of non-functional slack-fill,” the lawsuit claims.

In no uncertain terms, the lawsuit says Wise Foods deceives consumers into making purchases they would not have made had they known they were buying potato chip bags filled with more slack-fill than chips. The complaint even gives a by-the-numbers example of the true contents of the defendant’s potato chip bags:

“For example, below is an image of a bag of Wise’s Golden Original Potato Chip product containing 7 oz. of chips. The bag’s resting dimensions are: approximately 12.5 inches in height, with about .5 inches at the top sealed shut, and 6.5 inches by width. The line indicates the approximate height of the potato chips inside, which occupy about one third of the total available space – only about 4 inches out of a total vertical capacity of approximately 12 inches in height, i.e. about 33 percent of the available space, leaving about 8 inches (67 percent of the available space) as slack-fill . . .”

Wise Slack-Fill Potato Chip Bag