‘Boneless wings’ aren’t really boneless chicken wings. Is that fraud?

Back in January 2023, Aimen Halim bought an order of “boneless wings” at a Buffalo Wild Wings outlet in Mount Prospect, Illinois. At the time, he claims, he assumed the product was composed of deboned chicken wing meat. But to his horror, he discovered that it was in fact made from chicken breast meat. That revelation resulted in a federal lawsuit: Halim sued the restaurant chain two months later, alleging breach of express warranty, common law fraud, and unjust enrichment.

When U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp Jr. dismissed that lawsuit in February 2026, he did not question Halim’s claim of confusion about the nature of boneless wings. But even if Halim honestly thought he was getting a deboned version of Buffalo Wild Wings’ “traditional” wings, Tharp said, “his complaint has no meat on its bones,” because “Halim does not plausibly allege that reasonable consumers are deceived by boneless wings.”

Halim “says he expected to receive ‘wings that were deboned (i.e., comprised entirely of chicken wing meat),'” Tharp noted. “It’s unclear what, exactly, Halim expected such wing fillets to look like, or how he thought they would be made, and the complaint does not allege that the ‘boneless wings’ actually resembled traditional chicken wings (whether the drumettes, the flats, or both). It’s also unclear when or how Halim learned that [Buffalo Wild Wings’] boneless wings aren’t really made from wing meat.”

There were clues that might have alerted Halim to his error, including the restaurant’s description of its boneless wings as “juicy all-white chicken,” the fact that they cost less than “traditional wings” even though the deboning process he imagined should have made them more expensive, and the chain’s “cauliflower wings,” which he conceded was “clearly a fanciful name because cauliflowers do not have wings.” But “‘boneless wing’ is also clearly a fanciful name,” Tharp wrote, “because chickens do have wings, and those wings have bones.”

Boneless wings “are not a niche product for which a consumer would need to do extensive research to figure out the truth,” the judge added. “Instead, ‘boneless wings’ is a common term that has existed for over two decades.”

Halim was represented by Treehouse Law, which bills itself as the country’s “premier consumer class action firm.” But his lawyers’ attempt to enrich themselves by seeking damages on behalf of all similarly situated customers failed because Tharp rejected the premise that boneless wings are inherently fraudulent.

Tharp’s conclusion jibed with Buffalo Wild Wings’ cheeky response to Halim’s claims. “It’s true,” the company tweeted a few days after the lawsuit was filed. “Our boneless wings are all white meat chicken. Our hamburgers contain no ham. Our buffalo wings are 0% buffalo.”