Some additional trivia to help keep this discussion uh interesting.
* Lady with the hot coffee who sued McDonalds *
1) She was driving her car at the time. She was holding the coffee between her
legs. She was 81 years old. She suffered
3rd degree burns to her
legs and, er, adjoining anatomy and had to have skin grafts.
2) The judge did not allow the amount of money that was awarded to stand. So rather than go through a separate process for the amount to be awarded, the two sides negotiated and the 81 year old lady ended up settling for $600,000.
Anyway, 3rd degree burns from spilt hot coffee seems rather a severe injury to me so maybe,
just maybe the coffee served at that particular McDonalds really was waaaaaay too hot.
* Cheeseburger Bills *
The Tobacco law suit attorneys now looking to make a case out of this are all multi-hundreds of millionaires at least and a few now are billionaires as a result of the outrageous contingency fees they were paid when they represented the various State governments in the law suit against the tobacco industry.
I mention this because these guys are really good at figuring out a way to make a business realize that some stuff about how they do what they do is not what they want to be seen in the light of day. For example, it very well may be that McDonalds had a study made to see what got people to go back to their shops for more food and that study may have indicated that high saturated fat content had to be the way to go.
I remember going back about 10 or 15 years, that McDonalds was thought to have absolutely the tastiest french fries and it turned out that McDonalds still used real lard in their fryers. The eventually switched but not for a long time and not until they were able to develop a high trans-fat containing and similar tasting substitute for lard.
None of this proves that the fast food chains are making people overeat. BUT my guess is that these attorneys think that they can show that these businesses are actively researching human weaknesses and then coming up with sophisticated, perhaps even underhanded psychological ways to expoit them.
Who knows, there may be enough politicans out there who realize that their state government coffers are running out of cash again and may start a new campaign against the fast fooders claiming that medical treatment for obesity and obesity related diseases (cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, gout, etc.) are being caused by the fast food baddies.
That's why they sued the tobacco companies... because the medical bills were going out of control (and they still are, actually).
C'est la vie 
Sat Apr 10, 2004 1:14 pm 