Despite protestations from the company, a federal judge has decided to move forward on a lawsuit against McCormick & Co., the popular spice maker. The lawsuit has to do with the size of McCormick’s ground pepper tins.
A smaller player in the spice industry, Watkins Inc., filed a lawsuit against McCormick last year, claiming that the latter had reduced the amount of pepper in its tins by 25% while still using the same size tin. The old McCormick tins contained about 8 ounces of ground pepper. After the switch, the tins now contain about 6 ounces of ground pepper.
Despite this reduction in quantity the size of the tin has in fact remained the same. Watkins claims that this means that McCormick is using a visual trick to make it seem like they are selling more pepper per tin than they really are.
