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Have we found the ultimate Karen?
A South Florida woman alleges as the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit that she might not have bothered buying Velveeta’s microwaveable mac and cheese cups “had she known the truth.”
Amanda Ramirez says it takes longer than the advertised 3 ½ minutes to prepare the consumer-packaged good.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Miami, seeks more than $5 million in damages on behalf of the Hialeah woman and other purportedly hoodwinked customers. The suit accuses the Kraft Heinz Co., the maker of the cheesy cups, of deceptive and unfair trade practices, according to a story in The Washington Post.
“Consumers seeing ‘ready in 3½ minutes’ will believe it represents the total amount of time it takes to prepare the Product, meaning from the moment it is unopened to the moment it is ready for consumption,” the complaint argues.
The Kraft Heinz Co. called the lawsuit “frivolous” and “will strongly defend against the allegations in the complaint.”
The lawsuit, previously covered by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, was filed this month by William Wright of the Wright Law Office in West Palm Beach and Spencer Sheehan of Sheehan & Associates in Great Neck, N.Y. The attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday afternoon.
Sheehan has made a name for himself suing food manufacturers he says mislead consumers. He has filed more than 400 such lawsuits in recent years, NPR reported.
He went after Kellogg, arguing that the company’s strawberry Pop-Tarts marketing is deceptive because the pastries contain additional fruits. He said Keebler and Betty Crocker were wrong to call their cookie and cake mixes fudge because they contained no milk fat. And he took on Keurig Dr Pepper over the words that appear on A & W Root Beer cans: “MADE WITH AGED VANILLA.” That was among about 120 lawsuits over companies’ assertions that their products contain vanilla, NPR reported.
The firms contend there are probably more than 100 victims spanning multiple states where the product is sold.
"There are a lot of people that may feel this is just a little fibbing and not really a case and I get that," Wright told NPR. "But we are striving for something better. We want corporate America to be straightforward and truthful in advertising their products."