It was the infamous $2.7 million dollar cup of coffee - you know the one: the McDonald's cuppa joe that was so hot that when a New Mexico woman spilled it on herself a jury made her a millionaire for her pain and suffering.
If you thought that case was silly, then wait 'til you hear about the new legal mess McDonald's is about to be thrown into. It brings together three of my favorite hot button issues: nutrition, obesity in America, and people who seem to use their brains for cranium filler rather than thinking, especially when it comes to the misguided use of our court system.
Let's start with two statistics - both startling, but neither one surprising really: - In his best selling book "Fast Food Nation" Eric Schlosser tells us that Americans spend more of their hard-earned money on fast food than they spend on higher education.
- According to the American Journal of Hypertension, it's now estimated that obese or overweight Americans may number as many as 97 million.
When those two items are viewed side-by-side it's tempting to conclude that fast food is to blame for America getting too big for its britches. And there's absolutely no doubt that fast food is a factor in widening the middle of too many Americans. But should McDonald's shoulder the blame?
A 272 pound, Bronx, NY, maintenance man named Caesar Barber, thinks they should. He filed a lawsuit last week against McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Kentucky Fried Chicken (we'll call them the Fast Food Gang of Four), claiming that his obesity and related health problems are their fault. Caesar says that after he suffered two heart attacks and the onset of diabetes his doctor suggested that his diet might somehow be a factor. Good call, doc!
Caesar says that he never had any idea that fast food was loaded with sugar, saturated fat, and has a sodium content that's off the charts. McDonald's and the others, he says, never informed him. I wonder if Caesar's car dealer informed him that if he crosses the line painted down the middle of the road he might have a head-on collision with another car?
Caesar's attorney, Samuel Hirsch, recognizes the fact that most fast food places post a notice of nutrition information at their front counter, but dismisses this, saying that you have to be, in his words, a "rocket scientist" to figure them out. Hirsch believes that millions of Americans could take part in this claim against the Fast Food Gang of Four, but apparently obese fast food junkies who are also rocket scientists will be excluded.
So, who really is to blame? That's the sort of question that might be debated in the graduate class on legal activism at George Washington University in Washington, DC.
Professor John Banzhaf teaches that course at GWU, and his class - a sort of litigation incubator - has inspired a number of lawsuits over the years, including litigation pending against McDonald's. Banzhaf and his students concluded that it wasn't customers like Caesar Barber who were stuffing themselves on Big Macs and supersized orders of fries, it was McDonald's who was doing the stuffing.
Do they really believe that Caesar had no free will, that he was so completely under the spell of the Fast Food Gang of Four that they, not he, were responsible for his self control? Apparently so. And their solution would be to have the U.S. government step in to provide regulations that would protect those who have so little self control that they might consume anything that's not kept away from them.
Banzhaf feels that if the U.S. government won't regulate McDonald's, then the only recourse is to regulate them with lawsuits. This class on legal activism sounds like a perfect training ground for an army of lawyers who will go out and spend their careers expanding our already over-litigious society.
My favorite quote in this debate comes from Steven Anderson, the president of the National Restaurant Association, a trade group that opposes these lawsuits. Anderson says that a legal action like Caesar's, "gives frivolous a bad name."
Yes, frivolous is not what it used to be. Frivolous seems to have dropped to a new low with no end in sight.
Should a healthy, nutritious diet consist mainly of oversized cheeseburgers and deep fried potatoes? No. And you already knew that. Based on the evidence, I can only assume the e-Alert is popular among rocket scientists.
To Your Good Health,
Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute
Sources:
"Fat Suits: Who's to Blame for Flab?" MSNBC, 8/2/02
"Fast Food: Can You Sue if it Makes You Fat?" BBC News, 7/29/02
"Fast Food Nation: An Appetite for Litigation" Independent/UK, 6/4/02 |
