Costco Shrimp Lawsuit Involved Eight Month 'Investigation ... From New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to California'
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| Pepe's lawyered up... |
Instead, Verzani hired Weinstein, who launched an investigation into how much shrimp is really in a pound of Costco shrimp. In a "Period of eight months before this filing, none of the shrimp trays contained shrimp actually weighing at least one pound -- ever" reads the lawsuit Weinstein filed Monday in New York City following shrimp weigh-ins "From New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to California."
Who has time to to go back to the store, indeed?
SF Weekly reported on Verzani's class-action suit yesterday. And, in what appears to be an exclusive, we are the first media outlet to obtain a copy of the 19-page suit, which you can read here:
Weinstein is a serious guy and this is a serious suit -- at times you forget that it's about a $9.99 platter coming up skimped by a few shrimp. It's almost a dead certainty that the following paragraph has never been duplicated in the long history of Western Law before or since:
"Indeed, the cost of the short-weighted shrimp (at $9.99 a pound) greatly exceeds any minimal cost which potentially could be attributed to the included decorative leaf lettuce, the two lemon wedges and the small container of cocktail sauce, and no reasonable consumer would willingly pay for these inexpensive items at the price of $9.99 per pound."
Weinstein culled Costco's 10-Q statements to determine that roughly 410 outlets in the United States (and Puerto Rico) likely sell between 500 and 1,000 platters of shrimp per week, which led him to claim that between $13.32 million and $39.97 million a year. Weinstein is seeking compensatory damages, disgorgement, and/or restitution in addition to an injunction which would forbid Costco from selling the shrimp platters until they are relabeled. When asked if the suit was really more about forcing Costco to accurately price and label its product than award millions of allegedly bilked shrimp-buyers the money it would cost to buy half a platter, Weinsten adamantly disagreed.
"We believe they're both equal goals," said the Manhattan lawyer. "You don't just buy shrimp trays once. People buy them throughout the year. That is how class-action lawsuits work. It's a small amount of money for many, many people."
Or, as Rush frontman Geddy Lee memorably told Bob and Doug McKenzie, "Ten bucks is ten bucks."
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