McDonalds Obesity Lawsuit is Back

On Tuesday, an appeals court Tuesday revived part of a class-action lawsuit blaming McDonald's for making people fat. The court reinstated the claims pertaining to deceptive advertising.

The judge who had dismissed the lawsuit in 2003 said it failed to link the children's alleged health problems directly to McDonald's products. The appeals judges said New York's general business law requires a plaintiff to show only that deceptive advertising was misleading and that the plaintiff was injured as a result. The panel upheld other parts of the dismissal.

In dismissing the case, the judge had ruled that consumers could not blame McDonald's if they choose to eat at its fast-food restaurants. He said, "[i]f a person knows or should know that eating copious orders of supersized McDonald's products is unhealthy and may result in weight gain," Sweet had written, "it is not the place of the law to protect them from their own excesses." True enough. But if you watch “Supersize Me”, you discover that McDonalds has done a poor job of displaying nutritional information for its products.

As this unfolds, I’m sure we’ll hear about frivolous lawsuits that threaten to destroy American business, along with renewed calls for tort reform. However, if you’re not going to have robust regulatory agencies, tort liability still needs to be around. It would be interesting to find out more about McDonalds advertising practices (such as whether or not they target kids, just like the tobacco manufacturers are alleged to do). As Steve Gilliard comments, “trials are a good way to find out things we don’t know. . .”.