A federal judge on Thursday threw out a revised lawsuit against McDonald’s Corp . that accused the fast food restaurant of using misleading advertising to lure children into eating unhealthy foods that make them fat.
U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet had previously dismissed the plaintiffs’ original case but allowed them to submit a new filing with information backing up their advertising allegations.
In dismissing the current suit, Sweet said that the plaintiffs had not followed his detailed instructions and he barred them from filing another version, quelling litigation fears the suit had sparked in the food industry, .
“The plaintiffs have made no explicit allegations that they witnessed any particular deceptive advertisement and they have not provided McDonald’s with enough information to determine whether its products are the cause of the alleged injuries,” Sweet said.
“Finally, the one advertisement which plaintiffs implicitly allege to have caused their injuries is objectively non-deceptive,” he said.
The suit has raised fears in the food industry of a new wave of tobacco-like litigation against restaurants and manufacturers. Indeed, the possibility of bringing more suits over fattening foods was the focus of a seminar during the spring in Boston attended by anti-tobacco lawyers.
I am glad this is over, but IMHO, it was McJustice. Real justice would have been a court order proclaiming that these greedy lawyers and their obviously greedy clients be publicly humiliated/flogged and the lawyers disbarred for being a public nuisance.
David Perron
But…but what about the poor, obese CHILDREN?
dwight meredith
Frivolous suits lose. They lose early, often and big. They lose on motions to dismiss, they lose at summary judgment, they lose on directed verdict, they lose at trial and they lose on appeal.
Given that, greedy lawyers working on a contingency fee basis do not want frivolous suits. They go broke bringing them.
Frivolous suits are often brought by lawyers working on hourly rates. Examples of those suits include the “wholly without merit” lawyers for Fox News, the suit Arnold brought seeking $20 million because a thunbnail size picture of him was put in a small town Ohio newspaper ad without permission, or the suit by Monsanto against a dairy that accurately advertises its mil as being from cows free of Bovine growth hormone.
We do not hear much about those frivolous suits.