Restaurant in phone book under "Carcass Removal" - worst counter-response ever?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This story is interesting - a restaurant in Montana was listed in the phone book under “Carcass Removal”; the listing was shown on Jay Leno’s “Headlines” skit, and now the restaurant is suing the phone book company:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44459855/ns/business-small_business/t/restaurant-sues-over-carcass-removal-listing/#.To8KRHJBXDl

But to me, the strangest part of the story is in the last three paragraphs. The phone book company, Dex Media, makes the following three statements in their defense:

**In Dex Media’s response filed with the court, though, Black said the restaurant “assumed the risk of errors” when it authorized its telephone number to be listed in phone directories. The restaurant gave that authorization when it bought telephone service through a local telephone service provider, the response said.

Dex Media’s response also said that someone from the restaurant negligently berated a Dex employee. The restaurant should have foreseen that could have had negative consequences, so the restaurant is at least partly responsible for the damages, the publishing company said.

The company also argues that Dex is not responsible for the conduct of its employees if they operate outside the scope of their employment — and the employee who changed the restaurant’s listing to appear under the “Animal Carcass Removal” heading was operating outside the scope of his job. **

To me, all three statements are ludicrous. Statement one is silly because no one would ever assume a risk of something so off-the-wall happening. If I go out to lunch and order steak, I know there’s a “risk” I may order it rare but they may cook it to medium. That’s a reasonable risk. It’s far less reasonable to assume that I may order steak but they may bring me a steaming pile of poop.

Statement two and three are both silly because they both seem to suggest that Dex Media has no control or responsibility over employees while at work. Sorry, Dex, they are agents of your company!

However, IANAL. Are these typical of legal counter-arguments? Are the counter-arguments so incompetent that Dex media should fire their lawyers? Or are the points, however unlikely, somehow legit?

2

Statement 3 is the most ludicrous, in my non-attorney opinion. “Let the Master answer” is, I think, the legal slang for the situation.

Of course an employee of a company is its responsibility when the employee does something wrong directly related to his employment.

3

Bart: “I didn’t do it, nobody saw me do it, there’s no way you can prove anything!”

4

Oh yeah - Statement 2 also qualifies as blaming the victim. “He had it coming to him.”

I think Bart’s defense is better than their lawyer’s one.

5

Pretty much the same response I had when I first read the article.

The first argument is absurd from the beginning. There was no error. It was a deliberate act.

Item two. Classic blame the victim. Occasionally effective but should always be a non-starter.

Item three. This is not a case where the fast food worker is distributing drugs at the drive through. The employee was working within the parameters of his job when he changed the listing.

IMHO, three is about the only argument that might get traction. The fast food worker that spits in the customers food obviously isn’t following any authorized procedure but I think cases where the restaurant is sued and don’t settle run about 50/50 on the win/loss scale. No idea how they go on appeals.

6

I would love to be in the courtroom should this ever go to trial. I want to see Dex Media’s clock being cleaned.

7

I literally lol’ed reading it.

8

The legal concept in the first issue is a reasonable standard. A business putting its name in the yellow pages might reasonably be expected to accept the risk that the phone book company will misprint its number. But it would not reasonably expect that a phone book employee would vandalize its entry.

So the restaurant is going to have to convince a jury that being labeled as a carcass remover is not a reasonable expectation and the phone book company is going to try to convince the jury that it is.

9

But the restaurant owner didn’t put his name in the yellow pages. From the article, “Lacey’s lawsuit says a Dex Media employee deliberately published the listing after Lacey declined to buy an advertisement from him.” So the only place the restaurant’s number should have appeared was in the white pages.

And BTW, I assume that an advertiser prepares camera-ready copy that’s then used for the yellow pages ad. So there’s no possibility of a misprinted number.

10

No, there’s a difference between a listing and an ad, in your typical Yellow Pages-style directory.

Casting my mind back a couple of decades to the period when they were relevant, I recall that all businesses are listed in the Yellow Pages, but business owners may elect to pay for an ad in order to give their business a little more prominent exposure. (If a print ad in a telephone directory used only by doddering, senescent relics with no access to or concept of the internet can be declared to be “prominent” without inducing fits of giggles, anyway.)

11

What about body disposal…someone has to do it…

12

No. You got a free listing in the white pages, but you always paid for Yellow Pages listings (it was a bit profit center for AT&T). A single-line listing was relatively inexpensive, so most (but not all) businesses took one. However, you would pay more for things like large type, bolding, or a display ad.

13

What’s a phone book?

14

It’s that thing you stick under the couch when it breaks a leg and you can’t balance your computer in your lap anymore.

15

Thinking about it now I think it was an honest error from the result of some tranposition error in the software. Because I visited that town once and being hungry looked up a place to eat. Bubba’s Critter Getter sounded pretty good (I was thinking it was like a local version of Po’ Folks). The waiter seemed kinda suprised to see us but rustled us up a picknick table in the warehouse (I figured they were going for rustic/industrial charm atmosphere). He said the were out of everything but Possum Tartar and Pabst Blue Ribbon. It was okay but I wouldn’t eat there again.

16

(Former Iowa Senator) Roger Jepsen: I didn’t do it, there’s nothing wrong with it and God has forgiven me.

17

This relic searches for plenty of stuff on the Internet, but at times finds it quicker and easier to grab the Yellow Pages and look up a number than to locate, start up and search less efficiently with an electronic device.