Windfalls

[Cole Parker]

I know everyone here has been waiting all his life for a financial windfall, the proverbial pot of gold falling into his lap. Well, I'm happy to announce, your day has come. This from today's Cleveland Plain Dealer:

If you bought a can of StarKist tuna in recent years, you may have netted less fish than promised.

Thanks to a recent legal settlement, you can convert that tiny loss into a small fortune in tuna. Though StarKist Co. denies any wrongdoing, it settled the suit by offering to pay consumers either $25 in cash or $50 in fish.

The settlement applies to customers who bought even one 5-ounce can of chunk light or solid white tuna, in oil or in water, between Feb. 19, 2009 and Oct. 31, 2014. Recognizing that most people would not keep tuna receipts for more than five years, the settlement allows for a kind of honor-system filing, via the Web site tunalawsuit.com.

Filing a false claim would be perjury. All claims must be filed by Nov. 20. According to the lawsuit, the federal government sets standards for how much of various kinds of tuna must be contained in a "5-ounce" can.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Patrick Hendricks, of Oakland, California, had samples tested to see whether they met that standard.

For Chunk Light Tuna in Water, the standard is 2.84 ounces of pressed cake tuna. StarKist provided an average of only 2.34 ounces, the suit says. That's a difference of only half an ounce, but it's 17.3 percent below the legal standard.

For solid white tuna in water, there was a 6.83 percent shortfall; for solid white tuna in oil there was a 3.7 percent shortfall; and for chunk light tuna in vegetable oil the shortfall was 1.1 percent, the suit alleged.

There you have it! Report your half-ounce shortages and reap the whirlwind.

Myself, I'm going for the $50 in fish. Although knowing the scoundrels I'll be going after, they'll probably only send me $49.58 worth!

[Chris James]

I think Cole has too much time on his hands...perhaps the result of a well running post of his latest novel. Canned anything just kills my palate, and although I have some canned tuna in my hurricane supplies I hope never to eat it.

[Cole Parker]

I love tuna fish. If I ever go to a Subway, a tuna sandwich is what I get. $50 worth of tuna tins seems pretty good to me. My only problem is, I can't be 100% totally completely absolutely guaranteed sure I bought StarKist tuna during those years. It seems very likely, more that likely, that I did, but who wants to perjure themselves for a can of tuna?

[Chris James]

Aw Cole, you write fiction...how hard can it be?

[Cole Parker]

Perjury the province of writers? Writers having a special talent for it? And here I always though of it as an ethical, moral, if not legal issue! But we do make stuff up, don't we, and are decently good at it.

The only drawback, I guess, is the value we put on it. I'd like to think I can't be bought for $50. Well, no. For $49.58.

C

[JamesSavik]

I'm sure that I've bought the stuff.

[colinian]

We buy our tuna at Costco. The Costco Kirkland brand "Solid White Albacore Superior Quality Tuna Packed in Water" cans aren't 5 measly ounces wet (meaning the liquid isn't drained before weighing), they are 7 ounces wet and if you squeeze out all of the water in a can, the net is 5.1 ounces dry weight (it says so right on the label). You can tell the difference just by looking at the size of the cans. Of course, following the Costco mantra, you have to buy a shrink-wrapped stack of eight cans at once. But hey, it's much better, really, so eight cans won't last that long sitting in your cupboard. And if they do, the latest 8-pack we bought has an expiration date of March 2019.

Colin