Who's Going to Sue Banzhaf?

Responding to a USA Today editorial questioning the obesity lawsuits he champions, John Banzhaf continues to mislead the public about the track record of such litigation. "Five fat lawsuits already have been successful," he writes, predicting that "lawyers will continue to litigate against [obesity]--and probably continue to win."

In fact, as I pointed out in the August/September issue of Reason, lawyers have not won a single case in which they accused restaurants or food manufacturers of making people fat. None of the five "successful" suits to which Banzhaf alludes involved such a claim, and none of them resulted in an award of damages. The biggest quasi-victory was the $10 million settlement of a suit that faulted McDonald's for advertising that its French fries were cooked in vegetable oil while failing to mention that they were precooked in beef fat. The plaintiffs included Hindus and vegetarians. Describing this as a "fat lawsuit" is far more misleading than anything cited by the New York teenagers who blame McDonald's for their obesity.

[Thanks to Linda Stewart for the link.]

Comments

[rst]

Wow that is bullshit, as only a lawyer could drop. Do they actually think themselves that important in the grand scheme of things? Lawyers are a dime a dozen, and history and society would have done just fine without them.

Surveys suggest that juries will apply the same principle in obesity cases, especially where young children are the innocent victims. After all, we don't hold sick children liable for the faults of their parents.

They're not sick, they're fat, and they have no one to blame but themselves and/or their idiot parents. One does not get fat overnight. If you haven't the werewithal to notice your slowly growing girth, or that of your child, that's your own damned fault. Get on a diet and get on with your pathetic life.

But expensive taxpayer-funded government educational campaigns weren't very effective in reducing smoking, race discrimination, sexual harassment or other behaviors, while lawsuits were.

Lawsuits have reduced smoking? Now that's an impressive degree of self-importance.

[Juanita]

We have to get everyone slim and trim no matter how many lawsuits it takes. You may think it is a matter of personal choice, but the downstreame effects of your lifestyle choices on societies health insurance premiums are everyones problem.

J

[UFP]

Of course, Juanita, you beg the question of why society has to pay health insurance premiums for anyone, let alone fat people.

I'm hoping you're being facetious, though.

[UFP]

Upon further review, I can't think of a single person who has ever lost weight as a direct result of a lawsuit.

[rst]

the downstreame effects of your lifestyle choices on societies health insurance premiums are everyones problem.

So shall we sue distilleries and breweries for jaundiced and cirrhosed livers? Computer companies for lost productivity due to carpal tunnel syndrome? Will Banzhak champion the drive to sue our parents for congenital birth defects? Really, I can't wait to live in a "Pass The Buck" society. People like Banzhaf will ensure that generations to come will be conditioned to be little pussies who can't ever hold themselves accountable for the choices they make, while the old fucks -- an aged, infirm, and obese John Banzhaf included - will scratch their heads wondering what the hell happened to society.

I say sell fat riders. Make the obese pay their own dime to their insurance for their obesity. It's their choice, and their responsibility. Pay by the pound, porker!

In the interests of disclosure, this lawsuit is potentially bad for my portfolio.

[Brett]

Upon further review, I can't think of a single person who has ever lost weight as a direct result of a lawsuit.

Well, the Michael Jackson lawsuit seems destined to make me lose weight due to media saturation and resulting loss of appetite. Does that count?

[Juanita]

So shall we sue distilleries and breweries for jaundiced and cirrhosed livers? Computer companies for lost productivity due to carpal tunnel syndrome?

Perhaps, don't forget these greedy companies are out to make a profit and they entice us to buy their products through advertising. They have to be held accountable for the cost of the downstream effects on society of their products.

[Shawn Smith]

Concerning Juanita,

DFTT (Don't Feed The Troll). I like to think of that handle as a parody of joe, without the attempts to produce a cogent argument.

[rst]

without the attempts to produce a cogent argument.

And I suppose you have a cogent argument? Or are you just trolling?

[UFP]

I always forget DFTT.

Why doesn't the Reason Foundation launch a "public welfare" lawsuit against Banzhaf?

[Mo]

UFP,
I do know plenty of people that lost weight after getting dumped/stop getting sex. Maybe we need to update Lysistrata for the obese.

[Tyrone Biggs]

All the problems of fat what we got is because the white mans discrimination.

[rst]

My bad, I can't read.

I think Juanita is being facetious. Tossing up strawmen...FOR US TO POOP ON!

Pull!

[Shawn Smith]

No, rst. I don't, and I'm not. If there is a Godwin's law about DFTT, I'm sorry. Please continue on.

[thoreau]

Banzhaf continues to mislead the public about his expensive actions that have cost the public substantial sums of money without making anybody thinner. In fact, Banzhaf's actions are the number one threat to our economic well being.

I call for anti-Banzhaf legislation, or litigation if the legislature will not respond. And there is absolutely nothing hyperbolic whatsoever in this post. If there is, sue me for misleading the public! 😉

[rst]

If there is a Godwin's law about DFTT

Wha...? Who said Nazi?

No I initially thought you were saying I was a troll (which is why I said, I can't read). While I've had trollish tendencies from time to time, mainly for shits and giggles, I thought that to be a highly inaccurate assessment overall.

[rst]

Next up: amusement park rides. "Sorry Chunk, read the sign: 'You must be _this_ thin to ride this ride'"...

[joe]

I think the guy who mimics a black speaker by mangling spelling and grammar is really, really funny.

In that sort of "isn't it funny that black people are stupid?" kind of way.

Piss of.

[Tyrone Biggs]

In that sort of "isn't it funny that black people are stupid?" kind of way.

There be two things what I knows for sure, I take offense to those statements, and I likes the oeos cookie.

[WSDave]

--So shall we sue distilleries and breweries for jaundiced and cirrhosed livers? Computer companies for lost productivity due to carpal tunnel syndrome?--

"Perhaps, don't forget these greedy companies are out to make a profit and they entice us to buy their products through advertising. They have to be held accountable for the cost of the downstream effects on society of their products."

Comment by: Juanita at February 1, 2005 11:09 AM

I couldn't agree more. It's time to sue Merck and Pfizer for all the extra benifits that those old people will collect after they see some life extending drug on T.V. and get thier greedy doctor to write them a perscription. No wonder Social Security is going broke!!

Chant it with me, Juanita: "Down with healthy old people!!"

[sage]

I think we need to consider the effects of ugly senators on the public health. Especially when they are about to pass out. And sue them for that.

[rst]

On a serious note, how can a lawyer look a judge straight in the eye and honestly make a case that the McDonald's boy plaintiffs were so affected by an ad (which happened to precede their birth by a year) that over a prolonged period of time they were wholly under the control of McDonald's Corp? How does one get around the fact that those boys made their choices, with their money, in the presence of numerous healthy alternatives, the most notable being ordering less food. Moreover, how would a judge not find it patently absurd that a reasonable person would not notice some middle state between being healthy and being obese?

I think the guy who mimics a black speaker by mangling spelling and grammar is really, really funny.

In that sort of "isn't it funny that black people are stupid?" kind of way.

Actually, joe, Tyrone Biggs does not warrant himself to be black, or to be mocking one who is. Although in this forum the typo is too big a random event to ignore, I personally I find the mangling of grammar and spelling consistent with stupidity, illiteracy, and/or ignorance to be hilarious, no matter what color your skin is. Unfortunately, the prevailing assumption is that when one adopts such a tone in jest or humiliation, they are aping blacks.

How telling.

This could be selection criteria, however; the only Tyrone I know is white.

[joe]

rst, are you serious? You honestly didn't recognize the obvious racist mockery in the posts? Or are you just screwing with me?

[rst]

Nah dude I'm screwing with you. I see it, I'm just not as bothered by it. Unjust perhaps, but I still find it amusing. It ain't _my_ culture.

[Tyrone Biggs]

Or are you just screwing with me?

I don't be screwing with you. All what you says be racist in tone and the result of decades of the indoctrination of the establishment of existensialist discrimination in the white work world of the universe here on earth in the US.

[Tyrone Biggs]

I see it, I'm just not as bothered by it.

Eveybody o matta ewe day be, day eweze gits wut day deserve.

[MP]

c'mon joe, don't you watch Chappelle's show? "He who is without sin shall throweth the first rock...and I shall smoketh it."

[rst]

p.s. I draw the distinction along cultural, not racial, lines. I'll rib on a white man with no grasp of English as quickly as I would any. The tonalities, affects, and grammar of adherents to what may be mainstream (god help them if so) black culture is too amusing not to denigrate. Not all its adherents are black, but they're all ign'ant niggas.

[rst]

Maybe if nothing else from this discussion we can rebuild the Ultimate Pariah: a fat, black, Jewish, smoking, homosexual woman in an SUV.

[Juanita]

Eveybody o matta ewe day be, day eweze gits wut day deserve.

What the f**k are you talking about?

[Jose Goldberg]

Give me liberty or give me death!

The American people demand DEATH

[Juanita]

It is going to take a lot of lawsuits to make us all slim and trim.

J

[joe]

"a fat, black, Jewish, smoking, homosexual woman in an SUV."

Oh come on, you want Whoopie to drive a Hyndai?

[thoreau]

Could Juanita and Tyrone be the same person?

For that matter, maybe they're both croesus.

They could be crimethink, I suppose.

They definitely aren't Rick Santorum.

[Adam]

I probably shouldn't admit this but I was part of the "class" in the class action vegetarian suit against McDonalds. I was a vegetarian, and I saw a letter they sent to the nice Hindu lady about how their fries were cooked in vegetable oil, and I ate a lot of their fries, though I'm not sure I ever checked to see if they were cooked in vegetable oil. I thought it "served them right" - an uppity lil' bastard I was. In return for my troubles (sending in a letter stating that I was a vegetarian who ate McDonalds fries regularly), I received a nice letter in the mail explaining that we had won and that the nice Hindu lady got some money out of the deal, that McDonalds would sponsor vegetarian and Hindu sensitivity trainings or some crap like that. Given a second chance I would never have signed my name to that suit, but hey - they shouldn't just bullshit that stuff when it's a matter of eternal-life-and-death to some people, and a moral issue to others (like "young me" when I morally objected to eating animals).

[Jennifer]

Adam-
Advertising the vegetarian fries without mentioning the previous beef-fat soakage is false advertising, or at least a false implication. When exactly did McDonald's say that eating at their restaurant every day would make people trim?

I mentioned this on a previous thread before Juanita trolled it out of play, but seriously: IF McDonalds loses this lawsuit and the subsequent appeals, and IF therefore restaurants or food companies can be held liable if some people who eat their products turn into lardasses, then wouldn't the restaurants and such have the right to refuse service to people who look like they might be getting a little chunky? It's kind of like bartenders--they are considered responsible if they get a customer so drunk he causes an accident; therefore, they have the right and even the legal DUTY to refuse service to anyone who's had too much.

Come to think of it, now I hope this lawsuit succeeds. As a skinny chick who works with a lot of fat people, I could make a FORTUNE selling them cookies, candies and burgers that they're legally not able to buy until they diet down to a size 5!

Me, I wear a size 1, so I have plenty of room to smuggle fattening foods under my clothes and still look street-legal.

[Jennifer]

Quicker way to phrase the question: if this lawsuit succeeds and fast-food companies are held liable for making people fat, will fast food be treated like alcohol, where sellers can refuse to sell it to people, or will it be like tobacco, taxed to the point that less and less people can afford to buy it?

[ChasNYC]

Jen, Size 1? Does that mean that you are really short as well as thin (i.e., petite)?

One of my aunts wears a size 0, I kid you not. When I learned about this as a kid, the first thought that popped into my head was that she had to buy clothes so small that they couldn't be seen, and thus had to walk around in her bra and panties. Apparently, that's not what it means.

[thoreau]

Jennifer, if the War on Fat continues on its current trajectory, you will be subject to prosecution for selling illegal food to food addicts.

Of course, you know how inmates are able to get drugs despite being behind bars? Maybe if we regulate food the inmates will finally be able to get some tasty food.

[Jennifer]

Chas-
I own ONE pair of size Zero black jeans, and they look really, really good; unfortunately, I cannot sit down while wearing them unless I'm willing to sever some of my favorite and most cherished arteries, the ones right about my midsection. I suppose this means I should compare myself to your aunt and chastise myself for being fat, huh? It's McDonalds' fault--I ate one of their goddamned breakfast biscuits on the Mass Pike a few months back.

But all joking aside, I really am interested in what the legal ramifications of this would be, if food providers can be found "guilty" of making people fat.

[Jennifer]

Oh yes, and I'm tragically short.

[rst]

will fast food be treated like alcohol...or will it be like tobacco

I think it will be like both. Children under 18 won't be able to buy it.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Who's Going to Sue Banzhaf?

Couldn't we sue his mama? What are the laws on that?

[Tyrone Biggs]

As I says, all the problems with the fats what we got are the result of the white mans descrimination.

[Tyrone Biggs]

Me, I wear a size 1, so I have plenty of room to smuggle fattening foods under my clothes and still look street-legal.

You be one skinny assed motha fuckin white bitch.