Okay, guys (BB and other lawyer’s…)
I’m DAMN confused…
On what basis did an Appeal’s Court reverse the McDonald’s Lawsuit decision?
That suit HAS to be the “poster child” for our “Blame Society”…so help me understand…
C’mon…!
Thanks, guys!
Mufasa
As a side note…
In all my year’s, I’ve NEVER seen a Fast Food Company advertise their food as being “healthy”…
Mufasa
I’m no lawyer, (thank God, :^p ) But my understanding is that while they allowed it to proceed, it was with the idea that he had to prove that their advertising was deceptive. I doubt he can do that.
I believe they are reluctant to just throw out lawsuits, allowing people to have their day in court.
Then again I only saw a blurb on this, and didn’t check it out online, so what do I know?
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
As a side note…
In all my year’s, I’ve NEVER seen a Fast Food Company advertise their food as being “healthy”…
Mufasa[/quote]
But they are more than welcome to sponsor our athletes in the Olympics, and have pictures of healthy folks all over their wrappers and drink cups, etc. Same goes for candy bars and soft drinks, the list goes on and on. NONE of these products contributes in a positive way to the health of the fat bastards who consume them, but oh well. This is one of vroom’s gray areas, I guess.
Where are you oh Lord of Grayness?! Bestow upon us your shadowy and undefinable reasoning! 
hehe I’m a jerk
I just want to clarify:
I, in absolutely no way, hold McD’s or any other company like them responsible for the food choices made by the fat, miserable Shamu impersonators who frequent fast food “restaurants”. The only fault I would see in this is if they reported false numbers in protein and fat content, etc., like putting wrong numbers on labels on purpose.
America: You are fat because you eat too much, and don’t exercise. Suing McD’s will not help. Get off your fat ass, and stop eating crap like this, and poison merchants like McD’s will go out of business like they should have a long time ago. This is YOUR fault, not theirs.
And the same goes for smokers and tobacco companies. If we didn’t smoke, there wouldn’t be any tobacco companies. It’s YOUR fault! Stop blaming everybody else. I suppose you thought that the five packs of cigarettes you smoked every day had friggin’ vitamins in 'em, huh?
Okay. Sorry about that guys… I’m in a mood tonight. I promise to be better next time.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
But they are more than welcome to sponsor our athletes in the Olympics, and have pictures of healthy folks all over their wrappers and drink cups, etc. Same goes for candy bars and soft drinks, the list goes on and on. NONE of these products contributes in a positive way to the health of the fat bastards who consume them, but oh well. This is one of vroom’s gray areas, I guess.
Where are you oh Lord of Grayness?! Bestow upon us your shadowy and undefinable reasoning! hehe I’m a jerk[/quote]
Your post confuses me. If a girl buys Jennifer Lopez’s perfume, will she get a ghetto booty? If so, I know what I’m getting for Valentine’s Day. You should now proceed to complain about every BowFlex commercial that uses models who CLEARLY have used some serious gym time as their “secret”. And that TRIX rabbit, can’t a muthafucka get a bite? Just one bite of that damn cereal and they can stop torchering this animal. I’m calling PETA.
I haven’t followed this closely, and this is just a simple explanation, but the higher court reversed on the deceptive advertising claim only. It said that the legal standard used by the trial court wasn’t correct in that it required more allegations (such as reliance) than the law requires for a claim to proceed. Note that the appeals court only reversed on procedural error, not on the merits of the case. Make sense?
LOL!
Another question or two…
1)How long would a Restaurant stay in buisness that only offered salad, Tofu and flaxseed, with “Udo’s” for dessert? (Get my point?)
- Does Micky D’s force anyone to a) come into their restaurants b) look over the menu c)order then d) pull out their cash to pay?
Look…I’m not defending Micky D’s as being a bastion of health…but blaming them for you and your kid’s obesity???
C’mon…!!!
Mufasa
[quote]Professor X wrote:
If a girl buys Jennifer Lopez’s perfume, will she get a ghetto booty? [/quote]
Yup.
Sorry, but I just don’t think J-Lo’s booty would look good on you.
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
LOL!
Another question or two…
1)How long would a Restaurant stay in buisness that only offered salad, Tofu and flaxseed, with “Udo’s” for dessert? (Get my point?)
- Does Micky D’s force anyone to a) come into their restaurants b) look over the menu c)order then d) pull out their cash to pay?
Look…I’m not defending Micky D’s as being a bastion of health…but blaming them for you and your kid’s obesity???
C’mon…!!!
Mufasa[/quote]
I’m treating your two questions as rhetorical. As to your last point, however: neither am I a defender of McD’s, but the other side of the coin is that a corporation such as McD’s stands to greatly gain financially through it’s marketing to children. If it uses tactics such as including toys with it’s children’s meals, and constructing playgrounds, and generally marketing it as child-friendly, so that children want to go there, and then markets itself to parents as a place where they should want to take their children by deceptively representing itself as having wholesome meals, then McD’s should have to answer to that. (Patting myself on the back for crafting the world’s longest sentence.) Knowing that french fries aren’t good for you and eating them anyway, and proving that McD’s lied in its advertising about its processing and the nutritional value of its food to the detriment of children are two different things. The former is the parent’s bad, the latter is illegal.
That said, in the end I think McD’s will prevail here. There was a case decided by the Wis. Supreme Ct. recently that held that Harley-Davidson did not falsely or deceptively advertise its motorcycles as having first class engineering (or words to that effect) when in fact there was a lousy cam in it causing the engine to seize, stating that the claims were “mere puffery” that businesses have always used to attract customers. Similarly I think McD’s is doing the same by saying there food is wholesome.
I haven’t looked at the court order, but courts are generally reluctant to dismiss lawsuits before discovery (when the other side gets to demand to look at all your documents and evidence) unless you can demonstrate that the claim is completely baseless and has no chance of success. It’s a fairly low threshold.
This low threshold of survival for claims at the initial stage is a problem for companies and “deep pockets” because discovery can be a very expensive process. Many times the economic incentive is for a company to settle a case for less than the cost of a lengthy discovery just to make the annoying plaintiff and the annoying plaintiff’s lawyer go away. I personally think the standard should be raised from where it is – but that would start a debate over the possibly meritorious suits that might be dismissed due to lack of access to the other side’s evidence.
Like many other areas in life, there are two types of errors here that are pertinent – you can be too strict in your standard and dismiss meritorious claims, or you can be too lax and keep bad claims alive too long. In setting the standard, you can minimize one type or the other, but not both at once.
On the other hand, there is my preferred solution: adopting the British system of making the loser responsible for the winner’s legal fees (capped at a reasonable level in my plan).
[quote]Professor X wrote:
And that TRIX rabbit, can’t a muthafucka get a bite? Just one bite of that damn cereal and they can stop torchering this animal. I’m calling PETA.[/quote]
This is what I’m saying. Those trix commercials always pissed me off as a kid, and made me want to throw the tv around the room. Can’t anyone else see how they teach kids to discriminate against minorities?? Don’t even get me started on Lucky Charms…
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
On the other hand, there is my preferred solution: adopting the British system of making the loser responsible for the winner’s legal fees (capped at a reasonable level in my plan).[/quote]
A conservative defending an idea that was implemented in Europe? Impressive.
Now seriously, it’s not just in the UK they do that - it’s a common practice in several countries in Europe, including NL, where it is capped. Makes perfect sense, and I cannot see any good reason why it shouldn’t be implemented here also.
Where do all of these children get the money to buy food at McDonalds? Maybe instead of spending time trying to get money out of McDonalds (so that they can afford to buy MORE fastfood), they should worry about educating their children about health and nutrition.
The problem here is that everyone is worried about money, and being as lazy as they possibly can be (which having more money enables them to do). So a lawsuit is a great way to accomplish both.
Boy do I wish to be the judge on this case.
Kentucky Fried… oh, wait, they changed their name to KFC so we’d all forget they turned good food into fried crap.
Anyway, KFC ran commercials just a summer or two ago with a healthy looking guy who lost weight extolling the virtues of good eating, like KFC, being good for achieving your fitness goals.
I don’t know if they used the phrase “Our Food Is Healthy”, but they sidled right up to it. There was a stir over this commercial.
This shouldn’t be a surprise, but fast food companies (all companies) do anything and everything they can to imply that their food is good, that it will help you achieve lifestyle goals and that it isn’t bad for you.
For example, if Choco Monster cereal existed, they’d run ads to kids showing how fun it is, how good it looks, how much kids enjoy eating it, how good it tastes and then they’d throw in the vitamin fortification (in case mom was watching) and that served with milk it meets 100% of your daily needs of nutrients X,Y and Z which are important for healthy bones, teeth, skin, eyes, vital organs and getting good grades at school… yada yada. Oh, but we didn’t actually say it was good for you.
C’mon, no wonder people buy this shit, they’d have to do a lot of work to go learn that sugar bombs for breakfast might not be good for you. They’d have to read and read and read to figure out about insulin sensitivity and lipid storage and so on. Besides, kids generally seem to do okay no matter what shit they eat, and all the neighbors eat it too. Anyhow, what with all the diaper changing, cooking, cleaning, slaving over a lazy hubby, shopping for the family and working a part time job, who the hell has the time to sit down and learn anything that doesn’t come in a commercial sized 60 second blurb?
If it’s advertised, and the FDA hasn’t banned it, damn, with all the latest and greatest technology and additives it must at least be good for you in some way.
Anyway, I’m just trying to help some folks - who don’t realize that the world spins pretty fast once you get a lot of responsibilities and are out earning a living - get into the mindset of some of the general public.
McD’s and every other company pushing crap food is taking LEGAL advantage of these people every chance they get. They don’t give a shit about whether or not their food is healthy or not, they are out to make profits. Entities driven by profit, especially mega-corporations, easily make mistakes and slip into ethical quagmire.
There, I’ve said a whole lot about nothing… is that gray enough for you?
vroom,
You’re right, but it’s caveat emptor – or at least it should be.
As long as the companies aren’t lying in their advertisements, and the information is out there at the click of a button or even by writing to the company, I fail to see how people can blame the company for their purchasing choices.
Also, w/r/t lying, someone above brought up “puffery,” which is actually a pretty well used concept in these sorts of cases. THe advertising can’t just imply things and be false – it has to make specific false claims (depends on the product of course – some, such as medicines, are highly regulated). Also, manufacturers can make general claims such as “high quality,” “well constructed,” and, yes, even “part of a healthy diet” and be just fine according to the standards for false adverstising.
Some of you act as if they are serving poison over the counter. I ate at McDonald’s as a kid and so did damn near everyone else. We were not fat asses because of it, for one, because going to Mc Donald’s as a family in my house was considered more of a treat than a regular daily occurance. As a kid their ice cream cones were the shit and there couldn’t have been even 500 calories in that small hamburger they put in the Happy Meals. The key is moderation, not some attempt to act as if no one should ever eat fast food or as if fast food is killing you and should be banned. If and when I have kids, they will not eat there regularly…but if they want a hamburger every once in a while, they can have one. Exactly how “in shape” are all of you in this thread who have taken some moral oath to never eat at Mc Donald’s? Their grilled chicken sandwhiches are not bad for you. Their salads are not bad for you. That means to act as if eating there is a one way ticket to death is extremely short sighted.
You can take your kids to Subway everyday and if they don’t do anything when they get home, aren’t involved in any physical activities and “exercise” to them is pressing the X-Box controls really fast, they will be fat little fucks who never ate at Mc Donald’s.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
America: You are fat because you eat too much, and don’t exercise. Suing McD’s will not help. Get off your fat ass, and stop eating crap like this, and poison merchants like McD’s will go out of business like they should have a long time ago. This is YOUR fault, not theirs.[/quote]
If these forums had sigs this would be mine… I may just cut and paste for use on other boards.
Consider it stolen.
You can take your kids to Subway everyday and if they don’t do anything when they get home, aren’t involved in any physical activities and “exercise” to them is pressing the X-Box controls really fast, they will be fat little fucks who never ate at Mc Donald’s.[/quote]
Professor X hit it right on the dot!! Everything in moderation.
Boston, ProfX, I’m not disagreeing with you, simply showing where the gray line resides.
Companies sidle up as close to saying “It’s good for you” as they legally can, without actually saying it.