disLEXia

Saturday, 25. January 2003

Fast Food trials

A judge with balls

Kudos to District Judge Robert Sweet of the Southern District of New York for bringing some common sense to his ruling on the prominent "fast food" class action against McDonald's.  The judge dismissed the plaintiff's claims, essentially finding that product liability claims cannot be brought against the manufacturer of products which are well known to the average person to have inherent risks and dangers.  He did, however, grant the plaintiffs leave to amend their complaint to refine their allegations -- a common maneuver.   Let's see what the plaintiffs come up with. 

The case is Pelman v. McDonald's - PDF. (Thanks to How Appealing for the first of many mentions.)

Excerpts from the ruling deserve reproduction: 

The issue of determining the breadth of personal responsibility underlies much of the law: where should the line be drawn between an individual&146;s own responsibility to take care of herself, and society&146;s responsibility to ensure that others shield her? Laws are created in those situations where individuals are somehow unable to protect themselves and where society needs to provide a buffer between the individual and some other entity -- whether herself, another individual or a behemoth corporation that spans the globe.

*    *    *

This opinion is guided by the principle that legal consequences should not attach to the consumption of hamburgers and other fast food fare unless consumers are unaware of the dangers of eating such food. . . Following from this aphorism, one important principle in assigning legal responsibility is the common knowledge of consumers. If consumers know (or reasonably should know) the potential ill health effects of eating at McDonalds, they cannot blame McDonalds if they, nonetheless, choose to satiate their appetite with a surfeit of supersized McDonalds products. On the other hand, consumers cannot be expected to protect against a danger that was solely within McDonalds&146; knowledge. Thus, one necessary element of any potentially viable claim must be that McDonalds' products involve a danger that is not within the common knowledge of consumers. As discussed later, plaintiffs have failed to allege with any specificity that such a danger exists.

*    *    *

Thus, in order to state a claim, the Complaint must allege either that the attributes of McDonalds products are so extraordinarily unhealthy that they are outside the reasonable contemplation of the consuming public or that the products are so extraordinarily unhealthy as to be dangerous in their intended use. The Complaint -- which merely alleges that the foods contain high levels of cholesterol, fat, salt and sugar, and that the foods are therefore unhealthy -- fails to reach this bar. It is well-known that fast food in general, and McDonalds' products in particular, contain high levels of cholesterol, fat, salt, and sugar, and that such attributes are bad for one.

This rule makes sense in light of the policy issues discussed at the outset of this opinion. If a person knows or should know that eating copious orders of supersized McDonalds' products is unhealthy and may result in weight gain (and its concomitant problems) because of the high levels of cholesterol, fat, salt and sugar, it is not the place of the law to protect them from their own excesses. Nobody is forced to eat at McDonalds. (Except, perhaps, parents of small children who desire McDonalds&146; food, toy promotions or playgrounds and demand their parents&146; accompaniment.) Even more pertinent, nobody is forced to supersize their meal or choose less healthy options on the menu.

As long as a consumer exercises free choice with appropriate knowledge, liability for negligence will not attach to a manufacturer. It is only when that free choice becomes but a chimera -- for instance, by the masking of information necessary to make the choice, such as the knowledge that eating McDonalds with a certain frequency would irrefragably cause harm -- that manufacturers should be held accountable. Plaintiffs have failed to allege in the Complaint that their decisions to eat at McDonalds several times a week were anything but a choice freely made and which now may not be pinned on McDonalds.

Judge Sweet is no stranger to controversy, and he has a decided libertarian bent, as we can see from his comments in the second footnote of the opinion:

2   In the interest of consistency and integrity, it should be noted that the author of this opinion publicly opposed the criminalization of drugs. See Stephen Labaton, &147;Federal Judge Urges Legalization of Crack, Heroin and Other Drugs,&148; N.Y. Times at A1 (Dec. 13, 1989) (&147;Judge Sweet became the first Federal judge to propose publicly that illegal drugs be made legal . . . .&148;). This belief is based upon the notion that, as long as consumers have adequate knowledge about even harmful substances, they should be entitled to purchase them, and that the issue should be one of health, rather than of the criminal law. E.g., Robert W. Sweet & Edward A. Harris, Moral and Constitutional Considerations in Support of the Decriminalization of Drugs, in How To Legalize Drugs 430, 433 (Jefferson M. Fish, ed. 1998) (&147;Ultimately, we favor a drug policy that would be comparable to the nation&146;s current policy and legal framework regulating alcohol, and we suggest that support for such a policy -- based on a right to self-determination -- may be derived from the Ninth Amendment of the Constitution.&148;). The same logic must apply in the situation of fast food, which is arguably less harmful and certainly less demonized than drugs that have been made illegal -- unless, of course, this case is the opening salvo in the &147;War on Big Macs.&148;

Friday, 22. November 2002

RIAA's Anti-Infringement Site Infringes

I swear I'm not making this up. DSLReports observes that the RIAA's new anti-infringement website, UnitedMusic, contained material copied without permission from a page at the University of Chicago. The RIAA has now removed the apparently infringing material.

[Freedom To Tinker]
00:53 | permanent link | mail this

Tuesday, 19. November 2002

Converting Pi to binary: DON'T DO IT! (via Russ Perry Jr.)

Newsgroup: alt.math.recreational

WARNING: Do NOT calculate Pi in binary. It is conjectured that this
number is normal, meaning that it contains ALL finite bit strings.

If you compute it, you will be guilty of:



Copyright infringement (of all books, all short stories, all
newspapers, all magazines, all web sites, all music, all movies,
and all software, including the complete Windows source code)

Trademark infringement

Possession of child pornography

Espionage (unauthorized possession of top secret information)

Possession of DVD-cracking software

Possession of threats to the President

Possession of everyone's SSN, everyone's credit card numbers,
everyone's PIN numbers, everyone's unlisted phone numbers, and
everyone's passwords

Defaming Islam. Not technically illegal, but you'll have to go
into hiding along with Salman Rushdie.

Defaming Scientology. Which IS illegal -- just ask Keith Henson.

Also, your computer will contain all of the nastiest known computer
viruses. In fact, all of the nastiest POSSIBLE computer viruses.

Some of the files on my PC are intensely personal, and I for one
don't want you snooping through a copy of them.

You might get away with computing just a few digits, but why risk it?
There's no telling how far into Pi you can go without finding the secret
documents about the JFK assassination, a photograph of your neighbor's six
year old daughter doing the nasty with the family dog, or a complete copy of
the not-yet-released Pearl Harbor movie. So just don't do it.

The same warning applies to e, the square root of 2, Euler's constant, Phi,
the cosine of any non-zero algebraic number, and the vast majority of all
other real numbers.

There's a reason why these numbers are always computed and shown in decimal,
after all.

Monday, 11. November 2002

Silly-ass lawsuits, part 2

Father files suit after son fails to win MVP award - A New Brunswick father is suing the provincial amateur hockey association after his 16-year-old son failed to win the league's most-valuable-player award.

Michael Croteau is seeking $300,000 in psychological and punitive damages from the association. He is also demanding that the MVP trophy be taken from the boy who won it and given to his son, Steven, as well as the league's playmaker award, which was awarded to a different boy. Croteau also wants Steven to be guaranteed a spot on the New Brunswick Canada Winter Games roster.

In an interview yesterday from his home on Lameque Island, N.B., Croteau said Steven was so crushed after losing the New Brunswick Bantam AAA MVP award at a banquet in March that he lost his love for playing hockey. That, his father argues, resulted in Steven failing to pursue the Canada Games tryouts in which he had been excelling. (Globe and Mail)

[The LitiGator]
01:33 | permanent link | mail this

Tuesday, 05. November 2002

Suing the fat-pushers

The lawyer who led the "nonsmokers' rights" class-action suits is laying into a new target: pushers of obesity-generating foodstuffs:

Who will he sue now? For starters, schools with food contracts that provide sugary and fatty food, and fast-food companies in general. His argument: Many food companies have neglected to inform consumers about just how bad their products are, have made misleading health claims about them and, worst of all, have exerted enormous pressure on their most gullible audience -- children. Eventually, he predicts, the states could sue to recover the billions they spend on obesity-related diseases (diabetes, strokes), and then the companies could settle, presumably for oodles of money, like the tobacco companies did.

Friday, 01. November 2002

...

[Bag and Baggage]
14:47 | permanent link | mail this

Thursday, 24. October 2002

Dangerous Server Rooms

[The Register]
14:07 | permanent link | mail this

Anti-PC rant left on answering machine

MP3 file of an answering machine message by a guy who can't fathom that someone would use Windows to design websites. Link Discuss (Thanks, Raymond!) [Boing Boing Blog]
08:37 | permanent link | mail this

Tuesday, 15. October 2002

Internet Again

10 Minutes ago the "SYNC" LED on our ADSL modem switchd from red to green. So we are on the net again. Theoretically we where before connected via an Apple Airport with Modem but some confusing Interactions between the ISDN-to-analog converter in our PBX and the Airport resulted in a transferrate of ca. 800 b/s and RTT latency of up to 22000 ms (22 seconds!). So basically Internet was unusable.
11:10 | permanent link | mail this

Sunday, 06. October 2002

New software from Perimele brings security and total document control to Law Firms using MS Office.

New software from Perimele brings security and total document control to Law Firms using MS Office.. Any firm using MS Office applications such as Word, Excel or Powerpoint can now ensure confidentiality of information with a security add-in that controls who can save, copy, forward or print documents, and when they can access them. (Includes protection against screen shots of documents and prevents recipients from pasting material into other documents). [PRWEB 2002-10-05] [PR Web - Legal]

I wonder how they implemented protection from photographing the screen - perhaps by using a marketing lie?
22:52 | permanent link | mail this

Monday, 30. September 2002

Back blogging!

As you might have noticed this Weblog was broken in various ways in the last few days. Seems all showstopper bugs are ironed out and I can go on blogging. Nice.

You can find some explanation of my problems at http://md.hudora.de/blog/categories/niftyHacks/2002/30/
01:25 | permanent link | mail this