Whole Foods store in New York Whole Foods store in New York. Photo: Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg

A Manhattan federal judge has released Whole Foods Market Group Inc. from a proposed class alleging that the popular supermarket chain had overcharged its customers for prepacked foods at New York City stores.

U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York on Wednesday granted summary judgment in favor of Whole Foods, finding that plaintiff Sean John lacked standing to bring his claims. According to the ruling, John had provided “literally no evidence” to show that he had personally overpaid for products he bought from the grocer between 2014 and 2015.

Instead, Engelmayer said, John had relied solely on the findings of a 2015 investigation by the city Department of Consumer Affairs, which concluded from a sampling of stores that the company “routinely overstated the weights” of its prepackaged products.

Whole Foods later settled with the DCA, agreeing to pay $500,000 and implement policies governing the accuracy of its prices and labels. The company said any mislabeling had been the product of “simple human error” and not the result of any intentional misconduct.

Engelmayer in 2015 dismissed John's suit on similar grounds, but was reversed on appeal. Though it expressed concerns about John's ultimate ability to prove his injury, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said it was too early at the dismissal stage to determine the scope of Whole Foods' alleged overcharging.

On remand, John pointed to 22 debit card purchases he made at Whole Foods stores in Manhattan between 2014 and 2015, but could not produce any labels or photographic evidence of the goods he bought, Engelmayer said. John brought the lawsuit, he said, after he saw online “blurbs” referencing the DCA probe.

“The court finds that the evidence adduced could not support a verdict in John's favor,” Engelmayer wrote in a 40-page opinion. “Although John's testimony can establish that he purchased cupcakes and cheeses from two Whole Foods stores, there is no competent, non-speculative evidence that any cupcakes or cheese item John bought weighed less than the weight used to purchase it.”

Engelmayer said that without any particularized evidence to John's claims, John could not use only the DCA's findings to extrapolate a widespread practice of short-weighting that would have impacted his purchases.

Whole Foods was represented by Gregory J. Casas and David Sellinger of Greenberg Traurig. Casas is administrative shareholder in Greenberg Traurig's Austin, Texas, office and Sellinger is a New Jersey-based litigation shareholder.

Attorneys for Whole Foods did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.

While the dismissal came on standing grounds, Engelmayer said he would have ruled against him on the merits too.

“Viewed in the light most favorable to John, the DCA results support only that some indeterminate portion of the pre-packed goods at some Whole Foods stores, during the period of the DCA's review, were short-weight,” he said. “Under the case law, given the absence of any evidence specific to John's purchases, that fact does not come close to giving rise to a material dispute of fact as to whether he was injured.”

John was represented by Kim Eleazer Richman and Michael Mietlicki of Richman Law Group in New York City and Andrew Charles White and Jeremiah Lee Frei-Pearson of Finkelstein, Blankinship, Frei-Pearson & Garber in White Plains, New York.

Lawyers for the proposed class did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.

The case was captioned In re Whole Foods Market Group.

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