McLawsuit
Reheated: It Doesn't Taste Any Better
The McFatties are back.
A
month after a federal district judge dismissed their class action
lawsuit against McDonald's, a group of overweight children and their
parents filed a new complaint against the fast food giant maintaining
that Ronald, Grimace and the Hamburglar must pay up for childhood
obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.
The
revised lawsuit alleges that McDonald's misled consumers by getting
them to believe that fast food fare was nutritious and "could
easily be consumed as part of a balanced diet and lifestyle without
any detrimental health effects." Furthermore, the new claims
plead total ignorance on the part of the Super Sized kids because
the Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets, Filets-O-Fish, and French Fries
they ate with reckless abandon "were so processed with additives
and other ingredients and preservatives as to create a danger and
hazard unknown to... consumers."
Despite
the tremendous legal stamina exhibited by the overweight, out-of-shape
plaintiffs, their reprocessed allegations constitute nothing more
than reheating bad leftovers.
The
judge already ruled "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."
For this reason, "one necessary element of any potentially
viable claim must be that McDonald[']s products involve a danger
that is not within the common knowledge of consumers," according
to the court.
Seizing
upon these comments, the plaintiffs' latest complaint dwells upon
their lack of dietary knowledge in an effort to prove they didn't
understand that eating a Quarter Pounder a day wouldn't keep the
doctor away. Specifically, the plaintiffs argue that McDonald's
is to blame and must pay for their weighty health problems since
the less-than-tiny tots couldn't name every last ingredient in the
food handed to them in a paper bag via the drive-thru window.
But
a lack of such knowledge does not make McDonald's liable for the
unfortunate but far from unforeseen consequences of
the youths' daily consumption choices. As explained by the judge
when he "deep fried" the original complaint, as long as
"a person knows or should know that eating copious orders...
of McDonald[']s is unhealthy and may result in weight gain (and
its concomitant problems)... it is not the place of the law to protect
them from their own excesses."
It
is wholly irrelevant that the plaintiffs may not have known all
the "McFrankenstein" ingredients that made up their daily
unbalanced diets. The only legally important question is whether
they understood that regularly chowing down on fast foods could
enlarge their waistlines and constrict their arteries.
There
is simply no question but that the corpulent complainers knew
or, at least, should have known that a daily diet of fast
food could cause significant health and weight difficulties. After
all, "[i]t is well-known that fast food in general, and McDonald[']s
products in particular, contain high levels of cholesterol, fat,
salt, and sugar, and that such attributes are bad for one,"
as the judge pointed out a month ago. Based upon this common knowledge,
the hurdle is still too high for the plaintiffs to succeed in picking
McDonald's deep pockets for their own overindulgences.
To
read more about the original dismissal of McLawsuit, click
here.
[Posted
on February
27, 2003]
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