On March 31, 2026, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted in part and denied in part defendants’ motions to dismiss in Lama-Wolobah v. Paqui, LLC, a wrongful death action arising from a teenager’s ingestion of the “One Chip Challenge” tortilla chip. The plaintiff, acting as personal representative of her son’s estate, asserted negligence, breach of warranty, and Chapter 93A claims against the chip’s manufacturers (Paqui, Amplify Snack Brands, and The Hershey Company) and the retail seller, Walgreens.
The court first dismissed all claims against individual store employees and the negligence claims against Walgreens. The court held that Walgreens, as a retailer of a non-age-restricted food product, owed no legal duty to restrict sales to minors or to prevent a purchaser from later sharing the product with others. The court emphasized that the chip was not subject to statutory age restrictions like alcohol or tobacco and noted that Massachusetts law does not impose a generalized duty on retailers to anticipate that “teenagers share things.” Because no duty existed, the negligence claims (and by extension any derivative unfairness theory premised on the same conduct) failed as a matter of law.
The plaintiff also asserted that both the manufacturing defendants and the Walgreens defendants violated Chapter 93A, predicating these claims on the same alleged conduct underlying the negligence and breach of warranty counts — namely, defective design, failure to warn, marketing practices, and the sale of the product.
As to the Walgreens defendants, the court granted the motion to dismiss the Chapter 93A claim. Having already concluded that Walgreens owed no legal duty to restrict the sale of a non-age-restricted product or to prevent its later use by minors, and absent any allegation that Walgreens knew or had reason to know the product was defective, the court found no independent unfair or deceptive conduct that upheld a Chapter 93A claim. Because the Chapter 93A claim repackaged failed negligence allegations without identifying a distinct wrongful act, dismissal followed as a matter of law.
As to the manufacturing defendants, the court’s ruling tracked its analysis of the substantive product-liability claims. The court dismissed the manufacturing defect theory and dismissed the negligent failure-to-warn claims for failure to plausibly allege causation, but it allowed the negligent design claim to proceed. Because the plaintiff based her Chapter 93A claim against the manufacturing defendants on the same alleged misconduct, the court dismissed the Chapter 93A claim to the extent it relied on the dismissed theories but allowed it to proceed insofar as it was predicated on the surviving defective design theory.
The key takeaway from this case is that, despite liberal pleading standards, specific factual allegations must appear in a pleading to establish a prima facie case under Chapter 93A—particularly if the Chapter 93A is deemed derivative of common-claims.
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