Several teenagers have filed suit, alleging that McDonalds made them fat.
Do you agree with this suit? What will be its resolution? Will it go to trial? Which side will win?
“Help. the clown forcefed me Big Macs!”
The link to CNN expired, but it appears to be the same lawsuit.
The consensus view is that the suit doesn’t have a leg to stand on, and it will disappear long before trial.
Again, way to surrender ALL responsibility, folks.
While I agree that McDonalds spends an inordinate amount of money on advertising (apparently lots aimed at children, according to Fast Food Nation), I’m not sure a lawsuit claiming they “made me fat” is the best way to deal with this.
I’d be surprised if this actually got to the point where a trial began. I wonder if McD’s would be willing to make a cash settlement just to stop all the publicity.
While a preteen may not know the nutritional value of every food available for sale, where were the parents?
While a 15 year old may have a job, if this indeed had been going on for years, how could she not know? Where did he get the money to buy his super sized meals every day?
Not that I condone this, but maybe he should sue mom instead.
Grr. This is a real hot spot for me.
The suit is utterly without merit. It will not go to trial, because the judge will realize how ridiculous it is. However, the still-born case will receive lots of press, spurring on the “public interest” groups who clammor for a special tax on foods they don’t agree with. Politicians from the nanny-state mindset will draft legislation for such a tax. It will be narrowly defeated, and forgotten. Life will go on.
In the future, some other fat kid will say he didn’t know any better, either, Mickey D’s made him rolly-polly, waaaaah, and the cycle will continue.
Jeff
I’m glad responsibility can be shifted into a law suit.
Hmm, there’s the option of not watching TV, not going to McDonald’s and not buying their food. The nutrional facts according to this website have been around almost the whole lifetime of the 15yo.:
I bet she has no idea about a lot of things. “I have to pay the credit card bill? I had no idea!”
Is there an action group that campaigns FOR recognition of personal responsibility and AGAINST this sort of [unsuitable-for-GD-word]?
If so, I want to join it.
I thought the same thing about the people who cried, “I didn’t know that cigarettes would give me cancer!”
How long will it be before those wacky The Truth.Net people start telling the kids to take a stand against Big Fat, I wonder? “These people are trying to put you into a group! How are you taking a stand?” And then they’ll start piling body bags outside of the McDonald’s Corporate HQ and shouting over a megaphone that X number of people die every year from cheeseburgers. No, not from heart disease, or acquired diabetes, or something similar, but from friggin’ cheeseburgers.
Yes, but I like to think there’s a difference. (Of course, I fully think the tobacco lawsuits are mondo retardo, as well - maybe 40 years ago I’d buy it, but not today, sorry, uh-uh.) Big Tobacco™ for years pretended that there was nothing wrong with cigarettes. Granted, everyone who had two brain cells to rub together knew differently, but there was still a (vaguely) plausible chance that somebody could legitimately not know that ingesting large quantities of tar and ash into your lungs might be just a tad unhealthy.
But this is fast food, fer Pete’s sake! Nobody even bothers pretending that it’s healthy! It is advertised as being two things: a.) fast, and b.) food (and the ‘food’ bit is debateable, in the case of McD’s). There’s been nutritional information out on it for, as someone pointed out, the entire life-span of the lard-ass in question. Saying that he didn’t know fast food is bad for you (and further, that his mom - presumably an actual adult, with reasoning capabilities and everything - didn’t know) is comparable to saying he didn’t know that sticking your hand in the blender while it’s on might, ya know, kinda hurt. It’s a given. It’s part of the definition of “fast food”:
fast food: noun. A substance usually resembling food, devoid of nutritional value, and typically submerged in boiling lard until it achieves a cholestrol content sufficient to kill a yak. Also typically quite tasty.
So call me a blind optimist, but I still have a lingering shred of trust in the legal system’s ability to laugh this case out of the court.
Jeff
I have read nothing more than the title of this thread. I have nothing to contribute. I post only to berate december for his unspeakable perversion of all that is decent, for his shameless and vile corruption of the Mother Tongue.
Have you no shame, sir! Finally, have you no shame!
Seriously. That’s 2/3 of a pun–P U.
for letting them grow up to be lazy fat asses?
It’s a real shame that this lawsuit is so stupid.
Obviously the courts are not the place to settle the issue, and it just makes everyone involved look deservedly bad. But the underlying question is pretty interesting, and unlikely to be addressed in the fracas – why are Americans getting so fat, so quickly?
I just wanted to stop by and say I love the thread title (so there, you guys 
), and that article is HILARIOUS!! 
Har.
Not long enough. we got people claiming my SUV supports terrorism, yet it gets better gas mileage than my former car, which apparently doesn’t. Truth with start targeting other things soon, and hopefully by then i will be rich enough to fund my own commercials lambasting Truth.
Here’s some things I believe:[ul][]McDonald’s can’t afford to lose this suit, or even settle it. Too many other cases would follow.[]The analogy to liquor liability is funny. However, those ideas it once sounded funny when applied to drinking. Now liquor provider’s liability is accepted law – both liability to the drinker and liability to someone the drunk person harms.[]The plaintiff does have some good points. IMHO fast food places do encourage unhealthy eating. Their ads probably do affect children.[]I see a realistic chance that the plaintiffs might prevail, although Mcdonald’s would use all possible appeals.I hope this case will be a wake-up call to all fast food outlets to change their marketing approach. That could make a significant contribution to fighting obesity, which is a, uh, growing medical problem in the US, and worldwide.[/ul]
There’s another point for McDonald’s: scientific evidence indicates that pretty much any nutrient in sufficient quantity is bad for you. Its not a mayter of Fat = bad and vegetable = good. Those kids would have ended up with some other problem eating “Healthy Snax”, if they ate that much of it.
One of the best thread titles ever! Tip o’ the hat to December. 
As to the topic, if McDonalds made those kids fat, then their school made them stupid.
That’s what they said about the lawsuits against gun manufacturers, when they were sued for the damage caused by criminals who stole their products and used them illegally…
Tobacco, too. The packs had warnings.