New York customers who bought Arby's roast beef and Beef 'n Cheddar sandwiches were the proposed class in a false advertising case that Arby's Restaurant Group settled in principle in December 2025, ten weeks after a federal judge let most of the claims go forward. No class was ever certified and no settlement agreement appears on the public docket, so there is no fund, no claim form and nothing for customers to file.
Allegations Only · No Finding of Liability
The statements attributed to the complaint on this page are unproven allegations. Arby's Restaurant Group, Inc. contested them, no court found the company liable, no class was certified, and the case ended by settlement rather than by a decision on whether the advertising was deceptive. This page is informational and is not legal advice.
What Happened
The case is over, and there is nothing for Arby's customers to claim. On December 8, 2025 the parties told the court they had reached a settlement in principle resolving all claims, and on December 9, 2025 Judge Nusrat J. Choudhury dismissed and discontinued the action, cancelled all conferences and directed the Clerk to close the case. The order allowed either side to reopen by January 5, 2026 if the settlement was not consummated; nobody did, and a stipulation of dismissal was docketed on January 6, 2026.No class was ever certified in the two years and three months the case was pending, and no settlement agreement appears on the public docket. There is no fund, no administrator, no settlement website and no deadline.
What the Lawsuit Said Arby's Did
The case, filed September 5, 2023, was about the gap between a menu photograph and what lands in the bag. It alleged that Arby's photographs of seven items — the Classic Roast Beef, Double Roast Beef, Half Pound Roast Beef, Classic Beef 'n Cheddar, Double Beef 'n Cheddar, Half Pound Beef 'n Cheddar and Smokehouse Brisket — made the sandwiches look as though they held roughly 100% more meat than customers received, by pushing the meat toward the front of the bun and propping it up for the camera.A second theory ran alongside it. The complaint alleged that the photographs showed rare, reddish roast beef while the beef served to customers was not rare, so the advertising misstated the quality of the meat as well as the quantity. The same images, it said, ran on in-store and drive-thru menu boards, on Arby's own website and on third-party delivery apps.
The original complaint pleaded four counts: New York General Business Law § 349 and § 350, the state's deceptive-practices and false-advertising statutes, plus breach of contract and unjust enrichment. The amended complaint filed November 16, 2023 — the pleading that was actually litigated — dropped the last two and proceeded on §§ 349 and 350 alone. It also proposed two groups rather than one: a "Class" of people who ordered through Arby's own website or through Uber Eats, Grubhub, Seamless or DoorDash for pickup or delivery from a New York Arby's, and a "Subclass" of people who bought inside a store or at a drive-through in New York, both running from September 5, 2020 forward. The court noted these overlap rather than nest — the "Subclass" is not actually a subset of the Class, since buying in a store does not involve the websites and apps the Class definition requires.
Arby's answer to the substance came early and stayed consistent. The amended complaint alleged that after the suit was filed a company spokesperson told the news app NewsBreak that "promotional images are stylized for visual appeal and may not depict the exact portion size," adding that Arby's was working to improve the transparency of its marketing materials. Arby's later argued that the statement was not credible and should not be considered against it.
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Is There Anything to Claim?
No. A settlement announcement normally comes with a fund and a claim form, and this case produced neither.A class action settlement that pays consumers is not something the parties can simply agree to. Under Rule 23(e) the judge has to approve it, notice has to reach the class, and a claims process has to be opened and run by an administrator — the sequence that produces the settlement websites and claim deadlines consumers are used to seeing. On this docket none of that exists. There is no motion for preliminary approval, no notice program, no fund and no administrator.
There is also no class certification ruling. The case was dismissed roughly two months after Arby's answered the amended complaint, well before any certification motion was briefed. A settlement reached at that stage resolves the case that was filed. It does not create rights for other customers, and the terms were never made part of the public record — the December 9 order noted that the court would not retain jurisdiction to enforce the agreement unless the parties submitted it to be "so ordered," and the docket does not show that they did.
What the Judge Ruled in September 2025
The ruling that made this case notable came on September 29, 2025, in a 46-page opinion by Judge Choudhury denying most of Arby's motion to dismiss. Courts routinely throw out food-advertising cases at the pleading stage on the theory that no reasonable consumer takes a menu photograph literally, so a decision letting these claims proceed was the substantive event in the litigation.On standing, Arby's argued that the named plaintiff could not sue over five sandwiches he never bought, or over orders placed through delivery apps he never used. The court disagreed on both counts. Under the Second Circuit's class-standing test a plaintiff who suffered an actual injury may assert claims that implicate the same set of concerns, and here the alleged misrepresentation — the amount and the doneness of the meat in the photographs — was the same across every sandwich and every ordering channel. That ruling was denied without prejudice, so it could have been revisited at class certification; the court flagged in a footnote that never having used the delivery apps might make it hard to satisfy the typicality requirement later on. The plaintiff separately withdrew the request for an injunction, so no claim for injunctive relief remained.
The rare roast beef claims survived in full. The court found it plausible that the photographs could mislead a reasonable consumer because they depict reddish, light-colored meat of the sort associated with rare rather than fully cooked roast beef, and that even in the context of a lower-priced fast meal a consumer could plausibly expect to receive what the picture showed.
The volume claims split in two, and that split is all Arby's won. For the five sandwiches whose names say nothing about weight — Classic Roast Beef, Double Roast Beef, Classic Beef 'n Cheddar, Double Beef 'n Cheddar and Smokehouse Brisket — the claims proceeded. For the two Half Pound sandwiches they did not, and were dismissed with prejudice. The court's reasoning was that the name is itself an affirmative statement of how much meat the sandwich contains, and a customer cannot order one without using that name, whether by saying it at a counter or selecting it in an app. Against a name that states the quantity, the photograph is not what a reasonable consumer relies on for quantity — and the amended complaint never alleged that anyone who bought a Half Pound sandwich actually received less than half a pound. Leave to amend was denied as futile: no additional facts would fix a defect created by the product's own name.
None of this was a finding that the advertising was in fact deceptive. At the motion-to-dismiss stage a court assumes the complaint's factual allegations are true and asks only whether they state a claim.
Why the Case Got Past the Puffery Defense
Arby's principal argument was puffery — the doctrine that some advertising is so obviously salesmanship that no one could reasonably rely on it. It is the argument that ends most cases like this one. It failed here because a photograph is not a slogan.The Second Circuit splits puffery in two. Subjective puffery is vague self-praise that cannot be proven true or false; objective puffery is a claim that technically could be checked but is so exaggerated that nobody would rely on it — the Second Circuit's own illustration is a gum brand promising a bubble as big as the moon. A photograph of the actual product fits neither. Whether the sandwich in the picture holds twice the meat of the sandwich in the bag, and whether the beef in the picture is rare, are both things that can be measured and shown, which rules out the subjective branch. And the images are not absurd on their face the way the bubble is, which rules out the objective branch. Every case Arby's cited for the defense involved a slogan rather than a picture: "Better Ingredients. Better Pizza," a snack described as "smart and wholesome," a shoe brand's "Our Sheep Live The Good Life."
The court also distinguished the fast-food portion-size case Arby's leaned on hardest. In an earlier suit against Wendy's, brought in the same district, the theory was that the advertisements used the same quantity of meat as the restaurants served but photographed it uncooked so it looked larger — which that court found did not state a plausible claim. The allegation against Arby's was different in kind: not that the meat was styled to look bigger, but that there was simply more of it in the picture than in the product. That is an objective fact, and objective facts get decided on evidence rather than on a motion to dismiss.
How the Case Ended
After the ruling the case moved into ordinary litigation for the first time. Arby's answered the amended complaint on October 14, 2025, the parties exchanged discovery materials, and an initial conference was held November 3, 2025. Five weeks later the parties reported a settlement in principle.Neither side is required to explain why a case settles, and this one gives no public clue: the agreement is not on the docket, no amount is disclosed anywhere in the record, and the December 9 order says only that the court had been advised all claims were settled in principle. Any account of the terms beyond that would be guesswork.
Arby's was never found liable. The allegations were never tested by a jury. And for anyone who bought one of these sandwiches in New York, the case produced nothing to file.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I file a claim in the Arby's sandwich advertising lawsuit?
No. There is no settlement fund, no claim form, no settlement website and no administrator in this case. A class action settlement that pays consumers has to be approved by the judge under Rule 23(e), and notice has to go out to the class before anyone can file. None of that happened here: the court was told the parties had reached a settlement in principle, and the case was closed.
Did Arby's admit that its menu photos were misleading?
No. Arby's moved to dismiss the amended complaint and later answered it, and the case ended by settlement rather than by a ruling on whether the advertising was deceptive. No court has found Arby's liable, and the allegations in the complaint remain unproven. The amended complaint did allege that a company spokesperson told the news app NewsBreak that promotional images “are stylized for visual appeal and may not depict the exact portion size”; Arby's argued that statement was not credible and should not be considered against it.
What did the September 2025 ruling actually decide?
It decided only that most of the claims were adequately pleaded and could move forward, not that they were true. Judge Nusrat J. Choudhury let the rare roast beef claims proceed, along with the volume claims about the five sandwiches whose names say nothing about weight. She dismissed the volume claims about the two Half Pound sandwiches with prejudice, reasoning that the name itself states how much meat the sandwich contains, that a customer has to use that name to order one, and that nobody had alleged actually receiving less than half a pound. Leave to amend those claims was denied as futile.
Why does a settlement here not mean money for customers?
No class was ever certified, so at the time the case ended the only claims formally before the court belonged to the named plaintiff. A settlement reached before certification resolves the case that was filed; it does not create rights for other customers, and the docket does not show a settlement agreement filed on the public record.
Is any other Arby's advertising case still open?
Open Class Actions has not identified another pending case making these claims against Arby's. If one is filed and reaches a stage where consumers can act, it will appear in our settlements listing.
Sources
- Alongis v. Arby's Restaurant Group, Inc., No. 2:23-cv-06593, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York — Class Action Complaint filed September 5, 2023, and Amended Complaint filed November 16, 2023
- Opinion and Order on Arby's motion to dismiss, ECF No. 31, entered September 29, 2025 (Judge Nusrat J. Choudhury)
- Order Dismissing Case, entered December 9, 2025, and Stipulation of Dismissal docketed January 6, 2026
- CourtListener — the full public docket for the case
