Today’s smoking gun: fast food
More than a few trial lawyers took issue with a column I wrote in July of 1999 decrying a Florida jury’s verdict in the first class-action lawsuit by smokers to go to trial. The jury declared the tobacco companies guilty of producing a “defective product,” a finding that eventually led to a $145-billion award to 500,000 Florida smokers.
No one forced those smokers to take up their unhealthful habit, I noted. And while no one wished them the ailments they suffered, they hardly merited a multi-billion-dollar award for the imprudent choices they freely made.
The Florida verdict revealed just how perverse the American civil justice system has become. The nation’s courtrooms are often little more than casinos where plaintiffs, all-too-often recruited by avaricious trial lawyers, spin the wheel of fortune hoping to win some multi-million-dollar jackpot.
The target didn’t matter, I argued. In 1999, the big targets were cigarette companies, breast-implant makers and gun manufacturers, but it could easily have been automakers or beer companies or drug manufacturers or fast-food chains, I hypothesized. All of these consumer products pose certain risks. Indeed, there are 50,000 auto-related deaths in America each year. There are more than 100,000 alcohol-related deaths. There’s no telling how many deaths are attributable to overuse, or downright misuse, of prescription drugs.
The trial lawyers quarreled that my “slippery slope” argument was fallacious. They dismissed as absurd my suggestion that class-action lawsuits against the much-despised tobacco industry would eventually lead to similar litigation against the fast-food industry and other deep-pocket targets.
Well, I wonder what they have to say now in the wake of the just announced class-action lawsuit against McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken. The legal crusade against the fast-food industry is being waged by New York trial lawyer Samuel Hirsch. His lead plaintiff is one Caesar Barber, a 56-year-old, 5-foot-10, 275-pound New York maintenance man who claims: “the fast-food industry has wrecked my life.”
Barber has had two heart attacks and suffers from diabetes. He attributes his bad health to years of stuffing his face with burgers and fried chicken and other such fare. “I was conned, I was fooled, I was tricked,” he lamented. Hirsch accuses the fast-food industry of deceptive marketing practices — a statement previously made against the tobacco industry. He asserts that McDonalds, Burger King and others neglect to warn consumers about foods that could cause obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and elevated cholesterol.
But any reasonably intelligent adult recognizes the unhealthfulness of a steady diet of burgers and fried chicken. Yet Hirsch suggests that fast-food chains ought to affix some sort of warning on every burger wrapper, every bucket of chicken. And because McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and KFC didn’t state the obvious to Barber and other fast-food junkies — that over-consumption of fast food is bad for you — the trial lawyer believes they should pay.
Most Americans would no doubt concur with Steven Anderson, president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association, who said that the class-action suit against fast-food chains “gives frivolous a bad name.” Anderson sees it as “a blatant attempt to capitalize on the recent news stories on the growing rates of obesity.”
While it is regretful that some develop heart disease, diabetes or other obesity-related ailments, they surely do not deserve court awards for their unwise eating habits.
(Joseph Perkins is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and can be reached at [email protected].)