Judge: ‘Boneless wings’ suit vs Buffalo Wild Wings has no legs

Buffalo Wild Wings can’t be sued for selling “boneless wings” that are actually oversized, sauced chicken nuggets, because “reasonable” customers shouldn’t expect de-boned chicken wings, a federal judge has ruled.

On Feb. 17, U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp Jr. sided with the operator of the casual sports bar and grill restaurant chain amid the dispute over a claim that they have somehow duped customers by marketing their “boneless wing” menu items alongside their standard bone-in chicken wings.

“’Boneless wing’ is … clearly a fanciful name, because chickens do have wings, and those wings have bones,” Tharp wrote. “As the Ohio Supreme Court recently put it, ‘[a] diner reading ‘boneless wings’ on a menu would no more believe that the restaurant was warranting the absence of bones in the items than believe that the items were made from chicken wings, just as a person eating ‘chicken fingers’ would know that he had not been served fingers.’

“A reasonable consumer would not think that BWW’s boneless wings were truly deboned...