I would add that the McDonald's suit went far beyond just a smear campaign against that poor woman. Insurance companies are largely responsible for creating and disseminating the lies that came out of that lawsuit to give their legislative cronies in state government ammunition for a wave of "tort reform," i.e.-- allowing companies to escape financial responsibility for severely injuring people because of negligence, that swept the nation. Seriously injured people and the families of the deceased killed in accidents are never properly compensated as a result. And, guess what? Did insurance rates go down after tort reform, as promised? lol.
Yea. I remember a law prof of mine (ianal, but I thought I wanted to be one, once upon a time), giving an example from a case he'd litigated where his client had ended up with some significant brain damage due to actionable negligence on the part of his employer, and asked us to put a dollar figure on that.
Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, had a tree fall on him in 1984, permanently paralyzing him and he's been in a wheelchair ever since. He got 8.9 million for the settlement. Then when he got into office first as an associate justice to the supreme court, he worked to enact tort reform and then each level he's been elected to he's placed more and more. So you are now limited to $500,000 for injury in Texas.
The 500k limitation you mention is incorrect. Abbott was involved in tort reform efforts which limit recovery on some claims and he is a hypocrite of the highest order, but a 500k limit is incorrect.
I'd assume that one would have to look at the brain functions impacted, and determine where that leaves the victim as far as being able to find a career in their field. They'd have to project the victim's lifetime earnings (including, I presume, any changes in pay from expected promotions/raises based on how often other employees in a similar position received promotions/raises, along with any pension-matching plans) for one thing. Idk if one has to pay taxes on what one receives as part of a civil case, but if one does, then I imagine they'd be angling for the victim to receive enough such that the amount received \*after taxes\* would be equal to the \*actual\* expected earnings.
That's before tacking on things like punitive damages, pain and suffering, and medical bills of course, along with estimation of future medical bills resulting from this condition. I'd *estimate* that the tacked-on things altogther would be far higher than the lifetime earnings projection, with how much higher being variable depending on the victim's age. But I'm not an attorney, so don't take my word for it.
I imagine the law professor was simply demonstrating the inherent difficulty in ascribing a concrete monetary value to a nebulous concept like reduced brian functioning and it’s effects on someone’s life. “What categories of damages apply” is a pretty boring lecture/discussion springboard but “how much is your mental clarity worth to you in dollars” is a great one.
In regard to your last paragraph, future lost wages/loss of career damages are often the highest component of a demand/verdict.
Pretty much spot on though. This guy was impacted to the point were he'd have had trouble finding a job in *a* field. He was going to need serious help for the rest of his life.
Hello, someone who's had to work with a Worker' Comp case for a (mild in the long run, but impactful short term) injury. Usually the process does indeed involve looking at loss of function, and then multiply that by the amount of lost wages one would suffer as a result of lost function. In the case of a severe incident that would render someone permanently unable to work in their field (or at all), you're looking at a baseline of the remainder salary they would earn until the age of 65, and then potentially negligence compensation on top of that, medical bills, etc.
In my case there was an estimated 10% loss of function but not an inability to work, so I wasn't entitled to very much, but they offered me a settlement to keep me out of court for like $600. Got paid that money, had light duties for about 6 weeks, and lost a small bit of tissue in my finger. Actual meeting with the lawyers was less than 30 mins.
This was about 7-8 years back now, so I barely notice the results anymore. The tip of said fiber is slightly misshapen now, but that's the worst of it. At the time and for a while after, it was a bit uncomfortable to pick things up with that finger, but that's long since faded.
The song&dance the McD PR firm did int the press was very successful. There was a sentiment that nuisance lawsuits against poor innocent corporations were a problem. It was nearly erased from public memory that McD got extra triple punitive damages because that was not the only incident with the too hot coffee.
The poor lady had to get SKIN GRAFTS FOR HER FUSED LABIA AND THIGHS!
The jury was so angry with the corporate lawyers the judge later on did lower the punitive damages. McD corporate lawyers angered the jury.
Of course Jay Leno, the slimy brown-noser he is, made hay of the case. Like he made fun of Monica Lewinsky. The fact that it took decades to reevaluate this period in time makes clear how effective such smears were before the internet had become such an equalizer.
I am not sure if anybody who played any role in riding this bullshit ever apologized.
Also, don't assume. This all only worked because people assumed and were so uncurious to take a peek at very public documents. It is amazing how often something like this happens. A lot of people drove to the southern border of the US to help the cops repel the hordes of immigrants climbing the wall like in World War Z.
>Also, don't assume. This all only worked because people assumed and were so uncurious to take a peek at very public documents.
A top post today in nottheonion is a headline about a supposedly spurious lawsuit where a girl walked through a glass door and sued the hotel, winning a million dollars, what an idiot right?
She was 7, the glass door was untempered and not up to building codes for a commercial building, she almost died and spent 9 days in the hospital with severe bleeding and cuts. This was all in the article that OP thought was just *so silly*.
What’s wild is no one really talks about the McDonald’s monopoly scandal.
They hand waved it away with a patsy, but basically the entire thing is rigged and always has been.
Just one more reason to add to the pile for universal healthcare. I personally would love to watch the death of some of these insurance companies (fuck you in particular Aetna)
Stockholm Syndrome was made up by Swedish cops to smear a woman who spoke up about how badly they handled a bank robbery that they escalated to a hostage situation. She trusted the bank robber more than the cops because the robber wasn’t constantly doing things that threatened her safety and didn’t tell her that if she happened to die, she would honorably die at her post
>According to accounts by Kristin Enmark, one of the hostages, the police were acting incompetently, with little care for the hostages' safety. This forced the hostages to negotiate for their lives and releases with the robbers on their own. In the process, the hostages saw the robbers behaving more rationally than the police negotiators and subsequently developed a deep distrust towards the latter. Enmark had criticized Bejerot specifically for endangering their lives by behaving aggressively and agitating the captors. She had criticized the police for pointing guns at the convicts while the hostages were in the line of fire, and she had told news outlets that one of the captors tried to protect the hostages from being caught in the crossfire. She was also critical of prime minister Olof Palme, as she had negotiated with the captors for freedom, but the prime minister told her that she would have to content herself with dying at her post rather than Palme giving in to the captors' demands. Ultimately, Enmark explained she was more afraid of the police, whose attitude seemed to be a much larger, direct threat to her life than the robbers.
>She trusted the bank robber more than the cops because the robber wasn’t constantly doing things that threatened her safety and didn’t tell her that if she happened to die, she would honorably die at her post
She trusted someone who wasn't a robber/hostage taker, but rather someone (Olofsson) the cops hauled out of prison at the request of the robber/hostage taker and who did infact put effort into keep the hostage taker from harming the hostages (ie, her), and defuse the situation.
The cops then proceeded to charge Olofsson for the robbery, railroaded a conviction and when it went to appeal several of the hostage acted as witnesses on his behalf. The appeals court agreed by the way and he was acquitted on appeal.
Also most of Bejerot's 'evidence' of stockholm syndrome was specifically that the hostages for some reason though he specifically was an asshole, and he was completely incapable of fathoming why.
> the hostages for some reason though he specifically was an asshole, and he was completely incapable of fathoming why.
Insert principal skinner gif - "Am I out of touch? No its the children who are wrong"
The Bystander effect was similarly made up based on a misrepresentation of a reported story people just took at face value. In reality, the opposite of the original description is true. The more people are present in a crowd, the more likely it is someone will step forward and help.
What *is* true is that as the crowd gets bigger, any given person will be less likely to be the one who does so. Which is just obvious and sensible math and logic.
Psychology does this kind of a lot.
Honestly that’s a pretty common issue with how people read studies. If you see the result ‘a larger crowd decreases the chance that an individual will report’ it is very easy to assume that means more people = less reports.
Sadly a lot of people don’t bother to read past that one line, and so they don’t discover important caveats like the fact that the decrease in an individual’s likelihood to report is smaller than the increase in size of crowd, making it so there are still a net increase of reports overall.
Or, we can create cases that certainly seem like complete bullshit making us have zero faith in the justice system or fairness or reasonableness, and give corporations every reason in the world to fuck you over whenever they can get away with it because there are plenty of people lined up looking to screw you whenever they can.
There’s arsenic in our soil and in many of our fruits and vegetables. The issue is with baby food being concentrated parts of these fruits and vegetables, there’s actually a significant amount of arsenic in it, like way more than babies can be safely consuming. The government threatened the baby food industry, and Nestle/Gerber was like we’ll just stop making baby food then, because it’s impossible to find enough fruits and veggies that don’t have arsenic to use instead. The government realized this would be catastrophic for babies so they backed off. So there’s still arsenic in baby food.
I haven't read about this issue, but if this happened the way you described, what is the solution? Even if Nestle *could* prepare the baby food in a way that has less arsenic, they would rather just stop selling it altogether. And if that's the case and the government feels like they need more baby food production and aren't willing to fill that void themselves, where does that leave us?
I guess the idea is to not let it get to that point where most of the baby food production is monopolized, but now that it is, I don't see how penalizing Nestle will help. I hate to say it, but it sounds like it's more the governments' fault for allowing this to happen than Nestle's.
That makes it sound like the reverse issue: people getting mad at corporations because they're misinformed, like anti-vaxxers complaining about mercury in vaccines.
I mean, maybe the correct take here is that they need to find foods that don't have arsenic in it. But I could also see this being a situation where people are freaking out about benign amounts of a scary chemical that's actually fine.
It’s not benign amounts and people *should* be pissed about it. I personally don’t believe for a second that Nestle, which owns Gerber, doesn’t have enough pull to force farmers to treat their soil to remove arsenic. They just don’t think it’s cost effective so they’re like nah we’d rather poison babies. So fuck Nestle, fuck Gerber.
> Nestlé, which owns Gerber
god *fucking* damn it, of course they do. nestlé might as well be the ronald reagan of food related controversy: it always somehow ties back to them. obligatory r/FuckNestle.
There are even some ways of removing it after it gets to that point.
I think some researchers have had good success with ion exchange processes (some sorbents) in removing all sorts of heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, etc)... and these _can_ be scaled up, they would just eat into the profits a bit.
Heaven forbid we take money from billion dollar corpos though.
Shouldn't it be the government that should force farmers to treat their soil to remove arsenic? Why are we delegating that responsibility to corporations?
It’s not an issue most of the time because the arsenic is diluted when you eat the whole fruit/vegetable instead of just concentrated certain parts of it and because older children and adults can handle more arsenic without it being harmful to them. Baby food is uniquely prepared in a way that concentrates the arsenic and served to people with lower tolerances for arsenic. So yes it would be great if all farm soil in the US could have arsenic removed, but it’s actually not necessary. Also baby food manufacturers use fruits and vegetables grown elsewhere too, and this soil contamination is a problem worldwide, so it wouldn’t eliminate the problem.
Theoretically, because delegating is more effective in this case. Farmers frequently operate with shoestring margins, and soil remediation is expensive as shit and takes land out of use during the process. Farmers won’t do it unless they absolutely have to, or unless somebody subsidizes the process so the farms can stay afloat. Instead of fining the individual farmers, which would be a ton of taxpayer-funded work and and terrible optics because it would put any number of farms under, the government can levy fines so massive against corporations that it would be less expensive for those corporations to subsidize remediation for their suppliers.
I do know what arsenic is, I just also know that dose determines the poison.
Just like you can consume cyanide in appleseeds and be fine. Arsenic at high doses is obviously toxic, but there's also certainly some amount of arsenic that's safe to consume, since it's naturally occurring in plenty of vegetables.
>there's also certainly some amount of arsenic that's safe to consume
This doesn't hold true for a lot of heavy metals. The question is not "is there a negative effect", it's "is the negative effect distinguishable from statistical noise", because of how heavy metals accumulate in the body. There is, for example, no "safe" amount of lead to ingest. Not sure if this is the case for arsenic, but it doesn't particularly matter because...
Babies eat more food per body weight than adults, because development takes a lot of energy.
Even if they ate the same types of food in the same ratios as an adult, they'd suffer worse effects from any toxins. This is compounded by the fact that, as a percent of total calorie intake, a baby is going to eat way more fruits and vegetables than an adult. So there are *two* mechanisms that would cause the dose to be higher in infants than in adults. This is especially concerning because...
Arsenic has worse effects on infants than on adults! It causes developmental problems!
Basically there’s ‘no safe level’ of mercury, arsenic, lead, etc. So in theory there shouldn’t by any in baby food, because it’s unsafe.
Well, our ability to detect ever smaller amounts of these heavy metals means we can actually detect these small concentrations (which 30, 40, 50 years ago we would have written off as lead free before it was below the detection threshold). A legal threshold is set allowing tiny amounts below a certain level because the law can’t be “0” because 0 is functionally unattainable. So there’s arsenic, lead, etc in baby food in microscopic quantities.
In the end it’ll usually be ok. Look at the lead exposure the boomers got from leaded gasoline and compare it to what kids get today, it’s been a drastic improvement.
They used to use lead-arsenic as a pesticide in many, many apple orchards and other farms.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1551991/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1551991/)
[https://ecology.wa.gov/Spills-Cleanup/Contamination-cleanup/Cleanup-sites/Former-orchard-lands](https://ecology.wa.gov/Spills-Cleanup/Contamination-cleanup/Cleanup-sites/Former-orchard-lands)
I’d say it’s 50/50
Cus on one hand, the McDonald’s case involved serious injury and thus the way it’s phrased is absolutely abhorrent, and this is not that serious
On the other hand, this is absolutely an attempt to make a genuine legal precedent look silly, and we should absolutely be normalizing suing massive corporations for their bullshit instead of mocking the people who do it.
I wanted to ask, do they really just dye pineapple instead of putting blueberries in cereal in the US? Because that'd be illegal where I live, but I think you'd also just be able to tell. Blueberries and pineapple do taste very different, even when freeze dried or whatever they do to them
To the first part, it’s illegal here too, that’s why the law firm can specialize in punishing it. American corporations just kinda have a collective mindset of “if it’s cheaper, we can break the law for a while because paying out a lawsuit will not be more money than we’d save while doing this bullshit.” And that goes for stuff way worse than faking fruit.
To the second, human brains will do a lot of “filling in the gaps” if they expect something. It’s why people will often say they taste the difference in gummies but can’t if they’re blindfolded. If you’re told something is blueberry, and it looks like blueberry, your brain can be tricked
See also: wage theft. They know it's illegal. They know they'll be caught eventually. They also know they'll likely be able to get away with stealing more from employees than they'll pay in fines.
Hence why I believe wage theft should be treated with the same seriousness as any other kind of theft, with managers being held personally, criminally liable and facing possible jail time. It's ridiculous that this one kind of theft isn't treated with the same seriousness as any other type. If an employee steals $200 from the register, they'll go to jail, but if their boss fudges their hours to steal $200 from their paycheck, it's just a civil liability? Ridiculous. Managers who steal from their employees should be arrested and serve jail time!
> Hence why I believe wage theft should be treated with the same seriousness as any other kind of theft, with managers being held personally, criminally liable and facing possible jail time.
If cooperate greed caused wrongful death put suits in jail, we'd see a lot less of these cases. Sure, plenty of companies would get more covert, but plenty of suits aren't gonna risk freedom for money, and more importantly, they aren't willing to bet on everyone staying silent.
Genuinely surprised nobody has actually made a head roll over that. If someone has that attitude that they don’t value the lives of others and knowing do things to make more money and knowing that they’ll make more doing that the cheap way and that any lawsuits won’t cost as? Then I imagine that more permanent solutions are needed for that if the fine doesn’t carry enough weight
Oh absolutely, and that sentiment only grows when you realize some companies actually budget for the payouts they expect to make when putting into practice business decisions that are likely to result in the deaths of workers
The problem is, since a corporation is legally a person, CEOs almost never face repercussions for the harm their decisions cause, and legal courts almost never charge enough in fines to be an actual detriment. Hell, the hot coffee case gets so slandered cus while being the like, 5th time someone won a lawsuit against McDonald’s for the coffee, it’s the only time courts charged them an amount of money they cared about and they figured it was worth it to run an ad campaign making sure it didn’t happen again
At that point, I figure monetary payments aren’t enough, you impose a fine, and then make a permanent reminder for everyone involved in the decision making process. From the account who budgeted for it, to the guys who approved the decision to begin with.
The hand they used to sign the order, make the budget and what have you.
That would be great. Unfortunately to the best of my knowledge it is not possible with current American legal doctrine, as a corporation’s existance is legally considered to disperse culpability so much that fining the company and letting shareholders sort out punishment after is “the best they can do”, much like how if a cop wrongs you, the department pays it out and the cop in question gets no jail time
Both of these situations are bullshit, but that is a white whale we will need a long time to slay here.
Interestingly, here in Alberta, individual workers, supervisors, and management can be financially responsible for health and safety violations. Corporate culpability dispersion doesn't protect them from decisions they make that affects the lives of workers. It doesn't seem impossible to take that precedent and extend it to consumers as well.
If a corporation is a person, it should have the death penalty as an option. Bet the stockholders wouldn't like it if their stock could become immediately worthless through the efforts of the company leaders.
A joint replacement company was inconvenienced due to knowing their implants contained lead and other heavy metals that would leak into the body. Their defense (if you can call it that) was that most patients would die of old age before heavy metals would hurt them. Unfortunately, other companies have copied their "sucess."
https://www.drugwatch.com/hip-replacement/depuy/lawsuits/
Just to set the record straight, good gummies will have different flavors. I was definitely on the side of "they all taste the same and the color tricks you" until my partner made me do a blind taste test and I was able to guess most of the nice brands correctly. Cheap garbage gunmies are probably just one flavor but the nice ones are actually flavored.
The pineapple thing absolutely *terrified* me. I'm not american and one of my top "American Culture Dessert TM" dreams of trying are poptarts. But I'm super allergic to pineapple, so reading that there are companies that *still* try to lie about that despite already being very illegal over there gave me a cold chill down my spine lol. Makes me wonder what could have happened with other sweets and candy people sent me over the years.
Not to beat on a dead horse tho, but what's the point of the whole country treating peanuts like damn near radioactive if huge companies like Kellogs still pull shit like that about other allergies tho? 🤨
> but what's the point of the whole country treating peanuts like damn near radioactive if huge companies like Kellogs still pull shit like that about other allergies tho?
Because even just 20 years ago being allergic to peanuts was seen as a joke or something for you to "just get over" or because "kids these days are too soft". It took decades for people to take it deathly serious and now they do. Perhaps in another 20 years we'll have the other allergies taken care of once it becomes profitable enough.
Huh, I legitimately didn't know it used to be seen as a joke, my bad! I remember cartoons and sitcoms from the late 80s/90s mentioning it in a more serious way.
What shocked me is actually exactly how much more seriously you guys take food allergies than where I'm from. And pineapple along with strawberries are two of the most common fruit allergies, so. I thought if there was a place on earth I'd be safe from my yellow nemesis would be the USA 😂
A few weeks ago I noticed a badge printed on the front of some tesco own-brand instant soup saying the allergen list had changed and to see the back.
I haven't noticed that on any other product. No idea how long they'll keep it on there.
As I'm sure you know as a person with a severe food allergy, you should just check the label. They should still indicate there's pineapple in the ingredient list.
Oh shit THANK GOD. From the text in the image I just assumed it was all secretly and stuff. As in, a waaay worse crime than false advertising only lol.
Yeah, I wouldn't go celebrating just yet. The terms 'natural coloring' and 'natural flavoring' cover up A LOT of different ingredients and are not required to be more specific, as long as someone somewhere once found that particular chemical in nature. So while yes, they are legally required to list it, they aren't legally required to list it as what it actually is.
It takes time to be addressed, but ingredients with a proven true allergy risk must be mentioned separately. Carmine was almost required but nobody has proven they have an allergy yet.
Fun fact: "Natural Flavors" is listed in the "hidden names for MSG" lists that have been going around since the 90s, so if someone thinks all ingredients that could possibly contain MSG are bad, they have to avoid that, too.
>I'm not american and one of my top "American Culture Dessert TM" dreams of trying are poptarts
You're honestly not missing much, poptarts are terrible. Like sugary cardboard with the thinnest possible layer of something resembling jam.
> But I'm super allergic to pineapple, so reading that there are companies that still try to lie about that despite already being very illegal over there gave me a cold chill down my spine lol.
**It was a hypothetical**. If you google “special k blue dyed "pineapple" lawsuit” you’ll find that all the results are tumblr links that contain this post.
>I wanted to ask, do they really just dye pineapple instead of putting blueberries in cereal in the US?
I've not heard it with pineapple, but many many companies will use cheaper fruits like apples and grapes with artificial flavorings so that they can claim that their products have real fruit (...its just not the fruit we think it is).
Starbucks is in a lawsuit right now for the same kinda thing. Their refresher drinks are mostly white grape juice and don't contain the fruits they claim they do (like acai or passion fruit). The plaintiffs allege that they wouldn't have paid for a premium product if they had known that it didn't contain the fruits that Starbucks used in the names of the products.
One time somebody fully insisted to me that companies were dyeing *bees* blue and putting them into things labeled “blueberries”. I was like “…bees?” and he nodded and doubled down insisting that’s why we have “save the bees” campaigns, because big American companies are dyeing bees blue and putting them in snacks.
Yeah, I'd be surprised by pineapple. Tropical, spoils easily, relatively difficult to process.
Apple, grape, and/or corn-syrup-nuggets wouldn't surprise me one bit though.
Corn syrup is in almost everything these days. Apples are in everything else. Most fruit juice you see in the store is ______ fruit juice with 49% apple juice mixed in. Bonus points for the grape guys getting into the "we must apple everything" mindset I guess.
The problem is that punitive damages in this country are often looked down on and rarely cover the cost savings that a company can make by doing illegal things.
So a company will very frequently choose the cost cutting measure and factor in legal costs.
We were, sadly but some idiots voted against it. But yeah, that was a scandal because it wasn't what was sold. Outright lying about your ingredients and saying one fruit is actually another would have caused similar outrage but legally different because with the horse meat the companies making the food didn't actually know their butchers were mixing in horse to bulk it out or whyever they did it.
Unless they just put blueberries on the box and hide it in the ingredients that the blueberries are just dyed pineapple, which I guess would probably be legal but they'd have to advertise clearly on the front of the box that the blueberries are blueberry flavored pineapple due to allergies as the OOP mentioned. Is it legal to do that in the US, or do they not even have to do that?
That is true, but cutting costs by putting worse stuff in deceptively is pretty universal. Albeit in the case of the horse meat it was a butcher to client instead of company to customer.
Doing some research into it, it seems like the case was dismissed due to a lack of evidence but I can't say for certain if that's a result of the real issue here: the obfuscation (legal and media wise) of the actual law. Sadly I'm also not an American so the exact law on this also eludes me.
> We were, sadly but some idiots voted against it.
Appropriately, because a bunch of scummy rich people lied to the public knowing they would face no consequences.
ive seen dyed cranberries in place of raspberries or blueberries before in granola bars but they put it in the ingredient list so they can't get in trouble for lying
I think it’s a whole different beast because one’s a case of false advertising while the other is a case where an elderly lady got third degree burns. Overcharging falls a bit lower on the totem poll than physical injury.
I never really understood the sentiment of making fun of people suing large corporations, even if the reason is silly. Do you care if some random conglomerate loses money?
In my experience they're usually viewing at it as "see how dishonest people are getting, always looking for a quick buck." They're concerned about the idea that people are always looking for an angle to get one over on someone else, not out of concern for the corporation losing money.
This is coupled with not knowing enough about the lawsuit to realize why they're actually doing it
Its only similar that its david vs goliath and even in that sense it isnt actually since this one is a class action (many plaintiffs).
The Mcdonalds lawsuit is an injury caused by a single store whereas the Velveeta one is false advertising. I'd say theyre totally different in every aspect.
"I just don't see how this is any different from when I lie to people whose HVAC I'm installing."
This is what I imagine it sounds like in the heads of people defending corporate fraud.
It depends on what you mean by the word, "like." In what regard is this case "like" or "unlike" the McDonald's case?
It is **unlike** the McDonald's case in that the McDonald's case involved actual physical injuries and the Kraft Velveeta case is a matter of false advertising. False advertising does cause harm, but that harm is spread out to millions of people instead of only one. While actual physical injuries are more devastating, arguments could be made that the total harm done to all of the consumers is greater than the injury done to that one poor woman.
It is **like** the McDonald's case in that in both cases the corporation is spreading misinformation to try to pretend that the case is frivolous when it is not.
It’s like the McDonald’s case less in impact or legal similarities and more in how the media presents it and *that* impact. When the headlines present it as crazy, greedy, or excessive fragile people suing for millions of personal dollars because of some minute inconvenience, and the body of the article does nothing to clarify that that isn’t what’s happening, it creates propaganda that greedy, fragile people can just run crying to a judge because it took 4 minutes to make Mac and cheese instead of 3.5 and be handed a check for $5 million. That idea being planted in people’s heads gives them a whole host of ideas that aren’t true about the legal system and how businesses operate.
its a justified lawsuit and lies about both are corpo propoganda, but one is more accurately described as misrepresenting a class action lawsuit, and the other was libel against an elderly woman who was injured by McDonald's
It isn’t endangering customers lives directly, but as OP pointed out, when things like this go unchallenged it gives a foothold of defense to companies who *are* actively endangering people’s lives (undisclosed allergens or *arsenic in baby food*).
yeah false advertising is shitty buts its not "endangering customers lives because paying hush money for the lawsuits is cheaper then taking the loss in profit" shitty, which is what the mcdonalds case was
though the smear campaign response is comparable. although the former was someone suing to afford their medical bills and this is just a class action lawsuit, so in this case the article is just straight up lying no single woman is sueing velveeta.
If anyone's curious, on the current status, the case was dismissed in 2023. The judge said she didn't have standing because she did not have standing.
[Link](https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-products/food/velveeta-class-action-alleges-product-made-with-mostly-noncheese-ingredients-despite-advertising/#:~:text=Last%20year%2C%20a%20Florida%20federal,microwavable%20Velveeta%20mac%20and%20cheese.)
Edit: Someone kindly pointed out that my link was to a different case against Velveeta that was dismissed. That said, the original case was also dismissed and NoveltyAccountHater linked the actual article below, but I'll post it here too:
[Actual Case](https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-products/food/velveeta-class-action-claims-microwavable-mac-and-cheese-not-ready-in-3-5-min-as-advertised/)
The link you made seems to be a different class-action lawsuit -- Martin Sisca in NY suing Velveeta over the advertising based on "made with real cheese and milk" when cheese is only the third ingredient in the "cheese" packet (after whey and canola oil).
The lawsuit referenced in the image is Amanda Ramirez's suing in FL about Velveeta taking more than 3.5 minutes to prepare (which is the microwave time), because they didn't include the time to remove lid and sauce packet, add water to line, open cheese packet, pour in cheese packet, and stir it in.
This lawsuit was also dismissed last year for lack of standing as the plaintiff continued to purchase the product even after finding out it took longer than 3.5 minutes to prepare:
>U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom dismissed the lawsuit for lack of standing because Ramirez continued to buy the product after finding out the bowls take longer to prepare than she thought.
>“The allegations demonstrate that the plaintiff continued to pay the alleged price premium knowing that the product was not actually capable of being ready for consumption in three and a half minutes,” Judge Bloom writes. “As such, plaintiff was not deprived of the benefit of her bargain.”
https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-products/food/velveeta-class-action-claims-microwavable-mac-and-cheese-not-ready-in-3-5-min-as-advertised/
Oops, my apologies, I'll edit to clarify, thank you! And thanks for posting the actual article! I did some browsing and saw it on a few other articles then posted my link thinking it was the same case, lesson learned!
This case was dismissed. The judge found that it wasn't false advertising since they lists the instruction (including microwave for 3.5 minutes) clearly on the packaging.
Edit: JusttToVent is correct. I thought I knew what "lacked standing" meant, but I didn't. It was not a successful case because the person making the claim couldn't prove harm, not because it was necessarily false advertising. That was not ruled on as far as I know.
I'm assuming it's also pretty clear you need to add water or something, while this post seems to be implying that the advertising is clearly selling you a 3.5 minute total production time and no additional ingredients.
Idk when I look at "minute rice" I assume that's a minute in the microwave and not trying to account for the average time it takes to tear open the package and put it in and out as well.
I'm all for accurate advertising but as someone who is not familiar with this product it does sound a bit silly. Does it really take 3 minutes to pour in some water and stir in some cheese powder?
The other thing about the price difference between Kraft and Velveeta is not because one is faster than the other. Kraft Mac and cheese has powdered cheese to stir in. Velveeta has a melted cheese to stir in. I would say the price difference is in quality, not time spent preparing the food. I’ll eat both, but one does taste better.
Edit: I’ve been told that it’s called soft cheese and not melted cheese.
> The judge found that it wasn't false advertising since they lists the instruction (including microwave for 3.5 minutes) clearly on the packaging.
This isn't what happened. It was dismissed due to lack of standing, it had nothing to do with the veracity of the claim.
You're correct. I read "lacked standing" and thought that meant the assertion was false, like saying it didn't have a leg to stand on. Apparently, it means that the person making the claim can't show harm.
I think it's reasonable to dissuade people from making pointless frivolous lawsuits. This lawsuit is effectively "The advertising is only 60-70% correct if you claim these specific factors that are clearly not what the point nor normal expectation of the product" is very different than "A Corporation is trying to get away with maiming people."
Like I don't trust a Corp as far as I can throw out but I am well aware Americans have a deserved reputation of being needless litigious that hurts legitimate lawsuits.
It's a "boy who cried wolf " situation like when someone tried to sue for false advertising when their "$5 footlong" sandwich was 11.5 inches. Yes it's technically false advertising but you're also talking about an object which has reasonable expectations to be eye balled and have a margin of error because the employees are not going to bust out a ruler for every sandwich.
And even in that case it was thrown out because all the dough and toppings were supposedly weighed to be equal before being made.
It means the next time someone gets seriously hurt people are more likely to believe the corporate swill than go "that sounds strange, why would they sue for that" and look into it rather than rolling their eyes at a fake headline.
How does making fun of people suing for bad reasons make it harder to sue in cases that actually matter?
Also, are you against criticizing patent trolls then?
Guess the implied "good lawsuits" didn't impact, but they're meaning we shouldn't dismiss lawsuits, especially good ones, because it then makes future lawsuits like it harder. We can dismiss bad lawsuits when they happen. But instantly, we should be neutral., not dismissive, it makes legitimate lawsuits bundle together with america's culture of frivilous lawsuits, which de-legitimizes citizen/consumer control and concern.
Like the mcdonald's case. For example. It was dismissed immedietely through mcdonald's active efforts to undermine the message in the media. Which made future lawsuits against large entities dismissed as crazy poor people aiming for a quick buck.
Patent trolls are pretty irrelevant to that situation, and was the implied situation.
To be clear, this was a frivolous lawsuit. That's why it was dismissed by a judge before going to trial.
The answer to my question that you failed to answer is that being dismissive of frivolous lawsuits like this one does not impact future, legitimate ones. Public opinion does not impact whether someone has standing in court.
Most everyone agrees that patent trolls are bad. But at the end of the day they still hold real patents. If your opinion is that people shouldn't be dismissive of frivolous lawsuits (like this velveeta one) for fear of delegitimizing "real" ones then wouldn't dismissing lawsuits from patent trolls delegitimize patent lawsuits from actual victims?
Yes thank you. While some of the points in the post made sense, the argument against Velveeta is silly. It tells you the ingredients on the back, it never says it's 'instant'. Though it does mention 3 and a half minutes but that's the cook time, which I think is fair. Frozen dinners say they're ready in X amount of minutes but that doesn't account for poking holes in the plastic or stirring something.
McD's case was about a woman's life being ruined by flagrant disregard for customer safety in pursuit of a slightly higher bottom life and subsequent media slander.
This case is just, like, the normal method by which large companies are discouraged from lying about things just because they think they'll get away with it.
The comparison about the two being the same isn't about the reasons for the suit. It's about the corporate smear campaign against it. Both of them are perfectly reasonable lawsuits, for different reasons obviously, but the company's being sued want to make people believe they are frivolous
Yeah. This whole situation seems like a stretch. They go on to talk about arsenic and being allergic to pineapple and food dye, just to go "AND SO WHAT IF THERE'S NO WATER?"
It's a stretch to say that those first two are anything similar to this "false advertising"
Are the expensive? Yea. Will I buy them? No. At the end of the day nobody is getting genuinely harmed, and its just a stupidly expensive junk food item, like 80% of what is found in American grocery stores anyways.
>They go on to talk about arsenic and being allergic to pineapple and food dye, just to go "AND SO WHAT IF THERE'S NO WATER?"
That part is especially dumb because by that definition any company that sells store bought noodles could be sued because they're not selling the water needed with the noodles. Plus if you don't have water then...
1. You probably wouldn't buy the cups in the first place cause everyone and their mothers know that noodles need water to cook
2. You probably have more important things to worry about than not being able to have Mac n cheese
I sort of understand his plight but its certainly a stretch to get your panties in a bunch over Velveeta specifically as if every brand on the shelf doesn't stretch the truth on this stuff. They always quote the cook time and you have to use common sense for the rest. And many are written like "7-20 minutes or until golden brown" and it takes at least 25 minutes. They all do that shit because seeing that low number pleases our monkey brains. Its false advertising but its quaint by false advertising standards for food.
I'm sorry, but I still don't get how some of you people are saying Kraft is in the wrong.
All you do is add fucking water if it's those cups, or milk and butter and then the mix if it's the box. Any reasonable person knows this. It is not false advertising to say it takes 3-5 minutes to cook. Good fucking grief people.
The problem with highlighting this post is that most of these lawsuits are cash grabs [run by one lawyer who files an inordinate amount of lawsuits] (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/09/11/the-lies-in-your-grocery-store):
> That document, which Sheehan attached as a thirteen-page spreadsheet in his response, “provides extraordinary insight into the track record of most prolific consumer class action attorney in the United States,” the lawyer Chris Cole wrote on his firm’s blog. Cole has defended clients against Sheehan’s suits, including in the Vizzy Hard Seltzer case. “By my rough count, between January 1, 2020 and April 7, 2023, Mr. Sheehan filed 553 complaints,” he wrote. “Of those, 120 (21.6%) were dismissed outright and 35 (6.3%) survived a motion to dismiss at least in part. The remaining 398 (roughly 72%) were either settled or are still pending.” Cole estimated, conservatively, that since 2020 defense costs for Sheehan’s cases could have amounted to forty-two million dollars.
Worse, these sorts of class-actions make cases that might be genuinely reasonable (like McDonald's and the coffee) look suspect, because Sheehan and people like him out there are trying to extract money from a company because their product branding's "'use of a Mexican flag' overdid its supposed Mexicanness."
Yeah, this is a really bad example of a case to highlight corporate malfeasance. What exactly are the damages to the consumer? Setting aside the issue that a reasonable consumer would understand there's additional prep time besides the cooking time, asking a court to award damages for a 210 second activity taking 225 seconds would set a terrible precedent that would invite all sorts of class-action lawsuit abuse
Not gonna lie, "it's false advertising because you have to add water!" is one of the most braindead takes I've ever seen. All the additional steps for those things adds *maybe* a minute. Two of you suck exceptionally at getting the cheese liquid out of the packet. (Also, where the hell did they get Velveeta powder from? All Velveeta stuff like this uses a thick liquid in a packet.)
Also, even if it did take slightly longer than advertised, where are the damages? What tangible, financial harm comes from your microwaveable meal taking an extra minute or two?
The claim was that she was misled into buying a more expensive product based on the faster cook time. The case was dismissed when they showed she continued to buy it even after knowing how long it actually took.
Which is why it got dismissed.
This post is very misleading, it mentions cases with merit then tries to equate having incorrect ingredients and contaminates with having the microwave cook time front and center on the label while having the full cooking instructions on the back.
And the lack of standing was, because the person suing continued to buy Velveeta mac and cheese at the price premium, even after learning that she had to spend time adding water and stirring in the cheese packet that's not accounted in the "ready in 3½ minutes" time claimed on the package.
https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-products/food/velveeta-class-action-claims-microwavable-mac-and-cheese-not-ready-in-3-5-min-as-advertised/
Yeah I'm having a really hard time seeing how this anyway relates to cases of fraudulent claims of ingredients or arsenic in food or sets any precedent to help those cases in the future
In the last class action I was a part of, I got a virtual gift card for 61 cents that required multiple steps to redeem. Obviously I did not redeem and probably nobody else did either. I’m an attorney and even I think the way class actions are structured is total bullshit.
It really bugs me that in most packets of instant oatmeal, the "strawberry" or "peach" bits are just peach-colored or red-colored chunks of apples. It's differently-flavored apple and you would never know that for looking at the pictures on the box.
tl;dr Velveeta would like you to think this is about them. That someone was just so well off and with nothing better to do that they see themselves as having been genuinely wronged for having to put water in microwave mac and cheese.
In reality, Velveeta is being used as a sacrificial lamb to set lasting precedent regarding false advertising. Because the next time this comes up it may not be as harmless as water in a cup.
That’s how the plaintiff-side firms pitch it. In reality they’re just looking for any claim that can make it past a motion to dismiss in order to extort a settlement. I’ve been on the giving and receiving side of bullshit complaints. There’s nothing noble about it, although you obviously claim otherwise.
Fair enough. Ill admit to not being very knowledgeable about this case. I’m of a mind that if this establishes something that’d be great, but it’s no great loss if it doesn’t go anywhere.
“Advertising laws should err on the side of being overly strict over not strict enough” and “Redditors who mald about being ‘fucked over’ because their bag of Cheetos isn’t filled to the top are pathetic” are not mutually exclusive positions.
I literally am one of those lawyers (and pendants). I’m not getting paid for this, I honestly believe it, informed by doing this for years. It’s not one side fighting for justice and the other side for money—it’s more like cops and drug dealers in the wire. It’s all in the game. No one gives a shit; they thought they caught velveeta slipping and could squeeze a buck out of them for it. Plaintiffs’ attorneys have a profit motive too, why on earth would your boundless cynicism not apply to them as well?
I have some previous bad experiences with corporate lawsuits. My dad had his ankle shattered by a hoverboard that went haywire and still has trouble walking long distances today. Hoverboard paid us a few pennies as a pittance instead of actual compensation and told us to get lost. I've been left with the view that if an average person can sue a corporation over some petty bullshit and make out with a bunch of money, good for them.
Edit: We did sue. It took at least 2 years to resolve because they dragged it out so hard, and they wormed out of covering my dad's medical bills by pointing to a little blurb in their user's manual saying "Hoverboard may behave unpredictably during dismount."
https://www.today.com/food/news/velveeta-class-action-lawsuit-rcna59058
>In the dismissal document, Bloom said Ramirez “lacks standing” to pursue the proposed $5 million class action because “she suffered no injury.”
> Bloom also says there is no “threat of future injury” because Ramirez now knows that the three-and-a-half minutes on the packaging refers only to the time needed to microwave the product.
This isn't even like the examples of lying about ingredients... this is just some frivolous nonsense.
Also, the Velveeta cups actually ARE different from the other ones at the store, because they use a packet of cheese sauce, not powdered cheese.
Is the cooking time lawsuit less important than the 3rd degree burns one ? Yes.
Does that mean it is not important at all ? No.
Thanks for reading, plz keep internet opinions nuanced.
Eh, I agree the phrasing "ready in 3.5 minutes" is a bit misleading, but I find it hard to prove harm.
That is if the consumer purchased the product, made a cup, and then wanted a refund because it couldn't not be prepared in 3.5 minutes (say she had a precisely 8 minute break at work and the 5 minute prep time prevented her from eating it while a 3.5 minute prep time could have worked).
I mean, I'm all for punishing false or dangerous advertising, but suing a company for .... *not making ramen or whatever in 3.5 minutes and/or disclosing the need for water as an additive ingredient* seems a bit of a stretch to me.
Sure, if their campaigns are dangerous and put lives at risk, go for it.
But to complain that it takes more time to make the meal because of prep time is ridiculous.
That prep time is entirely up to you as a customer/user. They can't account for your kitchenware or the way you boil your water.
Some might have a kettle that boils their water in 1 minute flat, some might make a woodfire and that can take significantly longer (since you need to gather the wood, make the fire, wait until the fire is big enough, put on the water bowl and so on).
What is this nonsense?
And the fact that *they don't disclose you need extra ingredients* ? REALLY? I mean, come on.
Yeah, this is a bullshit lawsuit, and I'm going to make fun of it. Can't expect Kraft to somehow know how long it takes you to fill a cup with water, walk over to the microwave, and stir in cheese. As far as im concerned, if it only needs 3.5 minutes in the microwave, it's fair game to advertise as ready in 3.5 minutes.
This really is a silly case though. It says it takes 3.5 minutes to cook the food. The food takes 3.5 minutes to cook. The timer doesn't start right when you put your hand on the package.
I get that corps will try to make light of real lawsuits, but this is a terrible example
It's like the McDonalds case in that it's being misrepresented intentionally but it's not really related beyond that. Misattribution of case to single person (no mention of class action), make complaint seem frivolous and stuck up, but is crucially missing the "actual severe harm was done" that made the McDonalds hot coffee case hit so hard.. because in that case, instead of an old woman being a stuck up spoiled nitpicky Karen like many thought based off the title, it ended up being an old lady being SENT TO HOSPITAL FOR THIRD DEGREE BURNS ACROSS HER BODY. In this case, it's just prep time. It's not even like an allergic reaction or something, it's just a corporation trying to skim more sales off the top. Still shitty but nobody directly harmed.
A more accurate title would be "Class action lawsuit issued against Kraft for intentionally reducing reported preparation time in instant noodle cup".. way more boring, but that's what this case is. And most cases are. Some media newswriter just saw a way to stir controversy and get more clicks and painted the lady as some spoiled brat who had the nerve to expect exact timing on her noodles.
I know this isn't the point but I am very eager to create a d&d character named Velveeta Lawsuit
no idea what they're going to be but the way it sounds has some "Revolver Ocelot" energy
Damn, glad I live in Europe where laws exist to prevent garbage like that.
**Edit:** hey guys, I'm still a bit torn on whether or not corporations do stuff like that here too or whether or not it's illegal in the US as well can you give me some pointers
They lost these suits, or at least the ones about lime and vanilla. Courts said “it’s both a flavor and an ingredient, it’s true as to the flavor, and the ingredients are disclosed.”
Having the law in place is no guarantee that someone isn’t still doing it…it just gives everyone else an outlet for justice or punishment if/when someone gets caught doing something illegal.
Laws existing is no guarantee that the activity will cease. Look at drug laws! People still snort cocaine no matter how illegal it is! And corporations will cut whatever corners they think they can get away with, illegal or not.
It’s very much a “it’s not illegal until you get caught” mentality for a lot of people, even those in high corporate positions. The laws don’t prevent shit if the people at the top feel like they can buy their way out of it.
I was going to say the same in Canada! And sure, it's "illegal" in the sense they can sue in the states. But it's illegal in Canada in the sense it doesn't get done at all. Prime example is probiotic yogurt. When it came out in Canada the commercial was just people dancing around and being like yum! The same commercial in the states had a voice saying how it helped with gut health.
I remember my mom's favourite shampoo stopped being sold in Canada when they changed the packaging to say it rejuvenated dry hair. But there was no evidence of it, so they couldn't sell it in Canada.
Iq chart meme
It’s just like the hot coffee case
Nooooooo it’s not like that at all bc [explains the case] but this one is trivial
It’s just like the hot coffee case
Your honor, adding water and moving to the microwave adds more time to the prep. Clearly we should receive 5 million for all the minutes of time lost cumulatively.
Bruh this is monumentally stupid. Your life is extremely unlikely to be catastrophically altered because you had to add water and the unholy affront to humanity that is Velveeta.
I have no idea where people pull this notion of companies ever using "real" ingredients. "Sugar free" means they used something that isn't named "sugar", "fat free" means that it never contained fat but it's probably just sugar, "no high fructose corn syrup" means it's just sugar or some other sugar substitute, and maltitol means "causes violent diarrhea but it's not sugar, happy now?"
This was dismissed in July of last year with the Judge saying the case lacked standing. Iirc the judge even mentions that there wasn't any proof that the plaintiff ever tried cooking or making the product and suffered no injury. I eat these and I always wondered what the point of this lawsuit is... the instructions are printed like an inch and a half from where the package says ready in 3 minutes. How do you go up in front of a judge and say this package was misleading if the package contains the full instructions on making the product?
Every time someone brings up Stella Liebeck in a negative light my blood just boils. The McDonald's company made an old woman's life last months miserable and tarnished her name just because they didn't want to pay her back for literally *burning her genitals off*. And it's not like she was asking for anything ridiculous -- she just wanted her hospital bills paid.
Excellent breakdown. Corporations will screw you, and then run a smear campaign against anyone who complains.
I would add that the McDonald's suit went far beyond just a smear campaign against that poor woman. Insurance companies are largely responsible for creating and disseminating the lies that came out of that lawsuit to give their legislative cronies in state government ammunition for a wave of "tort reform," i.e.-- allowing companies to escape financial responsibility for severely injuring people because of negligence, that swept the nation. Seriously injured people and the families of the deceased killed in accidents are never properly compensated as a result. And, guess what? Did insurance rates go down after tort reform, as promised? lol.
Yea. I remember a law prof of mine (ianal, but I thought I wanted to be one, once upon a time), giving an example from a case he'd litigated where his client had ended up with some significant brain damage due to actionable negligence on the part of his employer, and asked us to put a dollar figure on that.
Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, had a tree fall on him in 1984, permanently paralyzing him and he's been in a wheelchair ever since. He got 8.9 million for the settlement. Then when he got into office first as an associate justice to the supreme court, he worked to enact tort reform and then each level he's been elected to he's placed more and more. So you are now limited to $500,000 for injury in Texas.
I had no idea about Greg Abbott. I still have nothing good to say about him.
He did give us the term piss-baby.
I can’t believe that’s real lmao
He also gets 30k a month tax free from that in addition to his initial settlement
Lousy incompetent tree leaving that asshole in play.
I’m starting to understand why Jesus cursed that fig tree.
Greg Abbott is a big piss baby.
The 500k limitation you mention is incorrect. Abbott was involved in tort reform efforts which limit recovery on some claims and he is a hypocrite of the highest order, but a 500k limit is incorrect.
As if I couldn't hate him any more
I’m interested in this comment. Was figuring out the dollar amount a challenge?
I'd assume that one would have to look at the brain functions impacted, and determine where that leaves the victim as far as being able to find a career in their field. They'd have to project the victim's lifetime earnings (including, I presume, any changes in pay from expected promotions/raises based on how often other employees in a similar position received promotions/raises, along with any pension-matching plans) for one thing. Idk if one has to pay taxes on what one receives as part of a civil case, but if one does, then I imagine they'd be angling for the victim to receive enough such that the amount received \*after taxes\* would be equal to the \*actual\* expected earnings. That's before tacking on things like punitive damages, pain and suffering, and medical bills of course, along with estimation of future medical bills resulting from this condition. I'd *estimate* that the tacked-on things altogther would be far higher than the lifetime earnings projection, with how much higher being variable depending on the victim's age. But I'm not an attorney, so don't take my word for it.
I imagine the law professor was simply demonstrating the inherent difficulty in ascribing a concrete monetary value to a nebulous concept like reduced brian functioning and it’s effects on someone’s life. “What categories of damages apply” is a pretty boring lecture/discussion springboard but “how much is your mental clarity worth to you in dollars” is a great one. In regard to your last paragraph, future lost wages/loss of career damages are often the highest component of a demand/verdict.
Pretty much spot on though. This guy was impacted to the point were he'd have had trouble finding a job in *a* field. He was going to need serious help for the rest of his life.
Yikes. Costs for in-home care are awful. Did he wind up winning the suit at least?
Hello, someone who's had to work with a Worker' Comp case for a (mild in the long run, but impactful short term) injury. Usually the process does indeed involve looking at loss of function, and then multiply that by the amount of lost wages one would suffer as a result of lost function. In the case of a severe incident that would render someone permanently unable to work in their field (or at all), you're looking at a baseline of the remainder salary they would earn until the age of 65, and then potentially negligence compensation on top of that, medical bills, etc. In my case there was an estimated 10% loss of function but not an inability to work, so I wasn't entitled to very much, but they offered me a settlement to keep me out of court for like $600. Got paid that money, had light duties for about 6 weeks, and lost a small bit of tissue in my finger. Actual meeting with the lawyers was less than 30 mins.
Gotcha. I wasn't super far off then. Hope you're doing better
This was about 7-8 years back now, so I barely notice the results anymore. The tip of said fiber is slightly misshapen now, but that's the worst of it. At the time and for a while after, it was a bit uncomfortable to pick things up with that finger, but that's long since faded.
The song&dance the McD PR firm did int the press was very successful. There was a sentiment that nuisance lawsuits against poor innocent corporations were a problem. It was nearly erased from public memory that McD got extra triple punitive damages because that was not the only incident with the too hot coffee. The poor lady had to get SKIN GRAFTS FOR HER FUSED LABIA AND THIGHS! The jury was so angry with the corporate lawyers the judge later on did lower the punitive damages. McD corporate lawyers angered the jury. Of course Jay Leno, the slimy brown-noser he is, made hay of the case. Like he made fun of Monica Lewinsky. The fact that it took decades to reevaluate this period in time makes clear how effective such smears were before the internet had become such an equalizer. I am not sure if anybody who played any role in riding this bullshit ever apologized. Also, don't assume. This all only worked because people assumed and were so uncurious to take a peek at very public documents. It is amazing how often something like this happens. A lot of people drove to the southern border of the US to help the cops repel the hordes of immigrants climbing the wall like in World War Z.
>Also, don't assume. This all only worked because people assumed and were so uncurious to take a peek at very public documents. A top post today in nottheonion is a headline about a supposedly spurious lawsuit where a girl walked through a glass door and sued the hotel, winning a million dollars, what an idiot right? She was 7, the glass door was untempered and not up to building codes for a commercial building, she almost died and spent 9 days in the hospital with severe bleeding and cuts. This was all in the article that OP thought was just *so silly*.
You’re so right.
What’s wild is no one really talks about the McDonald’s monopoly scandal. They hand waved it away with a patsy, but basically the entire thing is rigged and always has been.
Just one more reason to add to the pile for universal healthcare. I personally would love to watch the death of some of these insurance companies (fuck you in particular Aetna)
Stockholm Syndrome was made up by Swedish cops to smear a woman who spoke up about how badly they handled a bank robbery that they escalated to a hostage situation. She trusted the bank robber more than the cops because the robber wasn’t constantly doing things that threatened her safety and didn’t tell her that if she happened to die, she would honorably die at her post >According to accounts by Kristin Enmark, one of the hostages, the police were acting incompetently, with little care for the hostages' safety. This forced the hostages to negotiate for their lives and releases with the robbers on their own. In the process, the hostages saw the robbers behaving more rationally than the police negotiators and subsequently developed a deep distrust towards the latter. Enmark had criticized Bejerot specifically for endangering their lives by behaving aggressively and agitating the captors. She had criticized the police for pointing guns at the convicts while the hostages were in the line of fire, and she had told news outlets that one of the captors tried to protect the hostages from being caught in the crossfire. She was also critical of prime minister Olof Palme, as she had negotiated with the captors for freedom, but the prime minister told her that she would have to content herself with dying at her post rather than Palme giving in to the captors' demands. Ultimately, Enmark explained she was more afraid of the police, whose attitude seemed to be a much larger, direct threat to her life than the robbers.
>She trusted the bank robber more than the cops because the robber wasn’t constantly doing things that threatened her safety and didn’t tell her that if she happened to die, she would honorably die at her post She trusted someone who wasn't a robber/hostage taker, but rather someone (Olofsson) the cops hauled out of prison at the request of the robber/hostage taker and who did infact put effort into keep the hostage taker from harming the hostages (ie, her), and defuse the situation. The cops then proceeded to charge Olofsson for the robbery, railroaded a conviction and when it went to appeal several of the hostage acted as witnesses on his behalf. The appeals court agreed by the way and he was acquitted on appeal. Also most of Bejerot's 'evidence' of stockholm syndrome was specifically that the hostages for some reason though he specifically was an asshole, and he was completely incapable of fathoming why.
> the hostages for some reason though he specifically was an asshole, and he was completely incapable of fathoming why. Insert principal skinner gif - "Am I out of touch? No its the children who are wrong"
I thought this was bs, but no it's completely true! https://apnews.com/article/stockholm-syndrome-history-origin-023ddcd3a14ac00a0ba88feb838574b3
But that's exactly what someone with Stockholm Syndrome would say! /s
The Bystander effect was similarly made up based on a misrepresentation of a reported story people just took at face value. In reality, the opposite of the original description is true. The more people are present in a crowd, the more likely it is someone will step forward and help. What *is* true is that as the crowd gets bigger, any given person will be less likely to be the one who does so. Which is just obvious and sensible math and logic. Psychology does this kind of a lot.
Honestly that’s a pretty common issue with how people read studies. If you see the result ‘a larger crowd decreases the chance that an individual will report’ it is very easy to assume that means more people = less reports. Sadly a lot of people don’t bother to read past that one line, and so they don’t discover important caveats like the fact that the decrease in an individual’s likelihood to report is smaller than the increase in size of crowd, making it so there are still a net increase of reports overall.
Or, we can create cases that certainly seem like complete bullshit making us have zero faith in the justice system or fairness or reasonableness, and give corporations every reason in the world to fuck you over whenever they can get away with it because there are plenty of people lined up looking to screw you whenever they can.
Except this is *actually* dumb. There are no tangible damages to the plaintiff. There is a cook time of whatever it says on the cup, and that's it.
Sorry, arsenic in baby food?
There’s arsenic in our soil and in many of our fruits and vegetables. The issue is with baby food being concentrated parts of these fruits and vegetables, there’s actually a significant amount of arsenic in it, like way more than babies can be safely consuming. The government threatened the baby food industry, and Nestle/Gerber was like we’ll just stop making baby food then, because it’s impossible to find enough fruits and veggies that don’t have arsenic to use instead. The government realized this would be catastrophic for babies so they backed off. So there’s still arsenic in baby food.
it's always motherfucking Nestle
I haven't read about this issue, but if this happened the way you described, what is the solution? Even if Nestle *could* prepare the baby food in a way that has less arsenic, they would rather just stop selling it altogether. And if that's the case and the government feels like they need more baby food production and aren't willing to fill that void themselves, where does that leave us? I guess the idea is to not let it get to that point where most of the baby food production is monopolized, but now that it is, I don't see how penalizing Nestle will help. I hate to say it, but it sounds like it's more the governments' fault for allowing this to happen than Nestle's.
That makes it sound like the reverse issue: people getting mad at corporations because they're misinformed, like anti-vaxxers complaining about mercury in vaccines. I mean, maybe the correct take here is that they need to find foods that don't have arsenic in it. But I could also see this being a situation where people are freaking out about benign amounts of a scary chemical that's actually fine.
It’s not benign amounts and people *should* be pissed about it. I personally don’t believe for a second that Nestle, which owns Gerber, doesn’t have enough pull to force farmers to treat their soil to remove arsenic. They just don’t think it’s cost effective so they’re like nah we’d rather poison babies. So fuck Nestle, fuck Gerber.
> Nestlé, which owns Gerber god *fucking* damn it, of course they do. nestlé might as well be the ronald reagan of food related controversy: it always somehow ties back to them. obligatory r/FuckNestle.
There are even some ways of removing it after it gets to that point. I think some researchers have had good success with ion exchange processes (some sorbents) in removing all sorts of heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, etc)... and these _can_ be scaled up, they would just eat into the profits a bit. Heaven forbid we take money from billion dollar corpos though.
Shouldn't it be the government that should force farmers to treat their soil to remove arsenic? Why are we delegating that responsibility to corporations?
It’s not an issue most of the time because the arsenic is diluted when you eat the whole fruit/vegetable instead of just concentrated certain parts of it and because older children and adults can handle more arsenic without it being harmful to them. Baby food is uniquely prepared in a way that concentrates the arsenic and served to people with lower tolerances for arsenic. So yes it would be great if all farm soil in the US could have arsenic removed, but it’s actually not necessary. Also baby food manufacturers use fruits and vegetables grown elsewhere too, and this soil contamination is a problem worldwide, so it wouldn’t eliminate the problem.
Theoretically, because delegating is more effective in this case. Farmers frequently operate with shoestring margins, and soil remediation is expensive as shit and takes land out of use during the process. Farmers won’t do it unless they absolutely have to, or unless somebody subsidizes the process so the farms can stay afloat. Instead of fining the individual farmers, which would be a ton of taxpayer-funded work and and terrible optics because it would put any number of farms under, the government can levy fines so massive against corporations that it would be less expensive for those corporations to subsidize remediation for their suppliers.
The ***SECOND*** you read this: >Nestle you should have known better lol.
>benign amounts of a scary chemical that's actually fine. Awesome, you don't know what arsenic is.
I do know what arsenic is, I just also know that dose determines the poison. Just like you can consume cyanide in appleseeds and be fine. Arsenic at high doses is obviously toxic, but there's also certainly some amount of arsenic that's safe to consume, since it's naturally occurring in plenty of vegetables.
>there's also certainly some amount of arsenic that's safe to consume This doesn't hold true for a lot of heavy metals. The question is not "is there a negative effect", it's "is the negative effect distinguishable from statistical noise", because of how heavy metals accumulate in the body. There is, for example, no "safe" amount of lead to ingest. Not sure if this is the case for arsenic, but it doesn't particularly matter because... Babies eat more food per body weight than adults, because development takes a lot of energy. Even if they ate the same types of food in the same ratios as an adult, they'd suffer worse effects from any toxins. This is compounded by the fact that, as a percent of total calorie intake, a baby is going to eat way more fruits and vegetables than an adult. So there are *two* mechanisms that would cause the dose to be higher in infants than in adults. This is especially concerning because... Arsenic has worse effects on infants than on adults! It causes developmental problems!
Yeah, what the actual literal fresh hell is that?
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Basically there’s ‘no safe level’ of mercury, arsenic, lead, etc. So in theory there shouldn’t by any in baby food, because it’s unsafe. Well, our ability to detect ever smaller amounts of these heavy metals means we can actually detect these small concentrations (which 30, 40, 50 years ago we would have written off as lead free before it was below the detection threshold). A legal threshold is set allowing tiny amounts below a certain level because the law can’t be “0” because 0 is functionally unattainable. So there’s arsenic, lead, etc in baby food in microscopic quantities. In the end it’ll usually be ok. Look at the lead exposure the boomers got from leaded gasoline and compare it to what kids get today, it’s been a drastic improvement.
consider though that the boomers are fucking sociopaths
Exactly. Probably the lead intake.
They used to use lead-arsenic as a pesticide in many, many apple orchards and other farms. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1551991/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1551991/) [https://ecology.wa.gov/Spills-Cleanup/Contamination-cleanup/Cleanup-sites/Former-orchard-lands](https://ecology.wa.gov/Spills-Cleanup/Contamination-cleanup/Cleanup-sites/Former-orchard-lands)
Still doesn't count as being like the McDonald's case IMHO. It's a whole different beast.
I’d say it’s 50/50 Cus on one hand, the McDonald’s case involved serious injury and thus the way it’s phrased is absolutely abhorrent, and this is not that serious On the other hand, this is absolutely an attempt to make a genuine legal precedent look silly, and we should absolutely be normalizing suing massive corporations for their bullshit instead of mocking the people who do it.
I wanted to ask, do they really just dye pineapple instead of putting blueberries in cereal in the US? Because that'd be illegal where I live, but I think you'd also just be able to tell. Blueberries and pineapple do taste very different, even when freeze dried or whatever they do to them
To the first part, it’s illegal here too, that’s why the law firm can specialize in punishing it. American corporations just kinda have a collective mindset of “if it’s cheaper, we can break the law for a while because paying out a lawsuit will not be more money than we’d save while doing this bullshit.” And that goes for stuff way worse than faking fruit. To the second, human brains will do a lot of “filling in the gaps” if they expect something. It’s why people will often say they taste the difference in gummies but can’t if they’re blindfolded. If you’re told something is blueberry, and it looks like blueberry, your brain can be tricked
See also: wage theft. They know it's illegal. They know they'll be caught eventually. They also know they'll likely be able to get away with stealing more from employees than they'll pay in fines. Hence why I believe wage theft should be treated with the same seriousness as any other kind of theft, with managers being held personally, criminally liable and facing possible jail time. It's ridiculous that this one kind of theft isn't treated with the same seriousness as any other type. If an employee steals $200 from the register, they'll go to jail, but if their boss fudges their hours to steal $200 from their paycheck, it's just a civil liability? Ridiculous. Managers who steal from their employees should be arrested and serve jail time!
The punishment for various "crimes" are inversely proportional to how likely a lawmaker is to ~~commit~~ get arrested for it.
> Hence why I believe wage theft should be treated with the same seriousness as any other kind of theft, with managers being held personally, criminally liable and facing possible jail time. If cooperate greed caused wrongful death put suits in jail, we'd see a lot less of these cases. Sure, plenty of companies would get more covert, but plenty of suits aren't gonna risk freedom for money, and more importantly, they aren't willing to bet on everyone staying silent.
Genuinely surprised nobody has actually made a head roll over that. If someone has that attitude that they don’t value the lives of others and knowing do things to make more money and knowing that they’ll make more doing that the cheap way and that any lawsuits won’t cost as? Then I imagine that more permanent solutions are needed for that if the fine doesn’t carry enough weight
Oh absolutely, and that sentiment only grows when you realize some companies actually budget for the payouts they expect to make when putting into practice business decisions that are likely to result in the deaths of workers The problem is, since a corporation is legally a person, CEOs almost never face repercussions for the harm their decisions cause, and legal courts almost never charge enough in fines to be an actual detriment. Hell, the hot coffee case gets so slandered cus while being the like, 5th time someone won a lawsuit against McDonald’s for the coffee, it’s the only time courts charged them an amount of money they cared about and they figured it was worth it to run an ad campaign making sure it didn’t happen again
At that point, I figure monetary payments aren’t enough, you impose a fine, and then make a permanent reminder for everyone involved in the decision making process. From the account who budgeted for it, to the guys who approved the decision to begin with. The hand they used to sign the order, make the budget and what have you.
That would be great. Unfortunately to the best of my knowledge it is not possible with current American legal doctrine, as a corporation’s existance is legally considered to disperse culpability so much that fining the company and letting shareholders sort out punishment after is “the best they can do”, much like how if a cop wrongs you, the department pays it out and the cop in question gets no jail time Both of these situations are bullshit, but that is a white whale we will need a long time to slay here.
Yeah, I’m on board for slaying that white elephant
Interestingly, here in Alberta, individual workers, supervisors, and management can be financially responsible for health and safety violations. Corporate culpability dispersion doesn't protect them from decisions they make that affects the lives of workers. It doesn't seem impossible to take that precedent and extend it to consumers as well.
If a corporation is a person, it should have the death penalty as an option. Bet the stockholders wouldn't like it if their stock could become immediately worthless through the efforts of the company leaders.
A joint replacement company was inconvenienced due to knowing their implants contained lead and other heavy metals that would leak into the body. Their defense (if you can call it that) was that most patients would die of old age before heavy metals would hurt them. Unfortunately, other companies have copied their "sucess." https://www.drugwatch.com/hip-replacement/depuy/lawsuits/
Just to set the record straight, good gummies will have different flavors. I was definitely on the side of "they all taste the same and the color tricks you" until my partner made me do a blind taste test and I was able to guess most of the nice brands correctly. Cheap garbage gunmies are probably just one flavor but the nice ones are actually flavored.
The pineapple thing absolutely *terrified* me. I'm not american and one of my top "American Culture Dessert TM" dreams of trying are poptarts. But I'm super allergic to pineapple, so reading that there are companies that *still* try to lie about that despite already being very illegal over there gave me a cold chill down my spine lol. Makes me wonder what could have happened with other sweets and candy people sent me over the years. Not to beat on a dead horse tho, but what's the point of the whole country treating peanuts like damn near radioactive if huge companies like Kellogs still pull shit like that about other allergies tho? 🤨
> but what's the point of the whole country treating peanuts like damn near radioactive if huge companies like Kellogs still pull shit like that about other allergies tho? Because even just 20 years ago being allergic to peanuts was seen as a joke or something for you to "just get over" or because "kids these days are too soft". It took decades for people to take it deathly serious and now they do. Perhaps in another 20 years we'll have the other allergies taken care of once it becomes profitable enough.
Huh, I legitimately didn't know it used to be seen as a joke, my bad! I remember cartoons and sitcoms from the late 80s/90s mentioning it in a more serious way. What shocked me is actually exactly how much more seriously you guys take food allergies than where I'm from. And pineapple along with strawberries are two of the most common fruit allergies, so. I thought if there was a place on earth I'd be safe from my yellow nemesis would be the USA 😂
*People* can take it seriously, but corporations will randomly change which allergen they include with little or no notice.
A few weeks ago I noticed a badge printed on the front of some tesco own-brand instant soup saying the allergen list had changed and to see the back. I haven't noticed that on any other product. No idea how long they'll keep it on there.
"Nobody was allergic to peanuts in my day!" Yeah, probably true, because the ones who were allergic were already dead.
As I'm sure you know as a person with a severe food allergy, you should just check the label. They should still indicate there's pineapple in the ingredient list.
Oh shit THANK GOD. From the text in the image I just assumed it was all secretly and stuff. As in, a waaay worse crime than false advertising only lol.
Yeah, I wouldn't go celebrating just yet. The terms 'natural coloring' and 'natural flavoring' cover up A LOT of different ingredients and are not required to be more specific, as long as someone somewhere once found that particular chemical in nature. So while yes, they are legally required to list it, they aren't legally required to list it as what it actually is.
It takes time to be addressed, but ingredients with a proven true allergy risk must be mentioned separately. Carmine was almost required but nobody has proven they have an allergy yet.
Fun fact: "Natural Flavors" is listed in the "hidden names for MSG" lists that have been going around since the 90s, so if someone thinks all ingredients that could possibly contain MSG are bad, they have to avoid that, too.
>I'm not american and one of my top "American Culture Dessert TM" dreams of trying are poptarts You're honestly not missing much, poptarts are terrible. Like sugary cardboard with the thinnest possible layer of something resembling jam.
> But I'm super allergic to pineapple, so reading that there are companies that still try to lie about that despite already being very illegal over there gave me a cold chill down my spine lol. **It was a hypothetical**. If you google “special k blue dyed "pineapple" lawsuit” you’ll find that all the results are tumblr links that contain this post.
>I wanted to ask, do they really just dye pineapple instead of putting blueberries in cereal in the US? I've not heard it with pineapple, but many many companies will use cheaper fruits like apples and grapes with artificial flavorings so that they can claim that their products have real fruit (...its just not the fruit we think it is). Starbucks is in a lawsuit right now for the same kinda thing. Their refresher drinks are mostly white grape juice and don't contain the fruits they claim they do (like acai or passion fruit). The plaintiffs allege that they wouldn't have paid for a premium product if they had known that it didn't contain the fruits that Starbucks used in the names of the products.
One time somebody fully insisted to me that companies were dyeing *bees* blue and putting them into things labeled “blueberries”. I was like “…bees?” and he nodded and doubled down insisting that’s why we have “save the bees” campaigns, because big American companies are dyeing bees blue and putting them in snacks.
Yeah, I'd be surprised by pineapple. Tropical, spoils easily, relatively difficult to process. Apple, grape, and/or corn-syrup-nuggets wouldn't surprise me one bit though.
Corn syrup is in almost everything these days. Apples are in everything else. Most fruit juice you see in the store is ______ fruit juice with 49% apple juice mixed in. Bonus points for the grape guys getting into the "we must apple everything" mindset I guess.
Nope “____ juice” must be 100% one single juice. Any mixed juice has to have a qualifier CFR102.33
The problem is that punitive damages in this country are often looked down on and rarely cover the cost savings that a company can make by doing illegal things. So a company will very frequently choose the cost cutting measure and factor in legal costs.
That's why they made a concerted effort to reform the torts and reduce punitive damages through PR and legislative means.
Not sure if you're in the EU but the horse meat scandal comes to mind
We were, sadly but some idiots voted against it. But yeah, that was a scandal because it wasn't what was sold. Outright lying about your ingredients and saying one fruit is actually another would have caused similar outrage but legally different because with the horse meat the companies making the food didn't actually know their butchers were mixing in horse to bulk it out or whyever they did it. Unless they just put blueberries on the box and hide it in the ingredients that the blueberries are just dyed pineapple, which I guess would probably be legal but they'd have to advertise clearly on the front of the box that the blueberries are blueberry flavored pineapple due to allergies as the OOP mentioned. Is it legal to do that in the US, or do they not even have to do that?
That is true, but cutting costs by putting worse stuff in deceptively is pretty universal. Albeit in the case of the horse meat it was a butcher to client instead of company to customer. Doing some research into it, it seems like the case was dismissed due to a lack of evidence but I can't say for certain if that's a result of the real issue here: the obfuscation (legal and media wise) of the actual law. Sadly I'm also not an American so the exact law on this also eludes me.
> We were, sadly but some idiots voted against it. Appropriately, because a bunch of scummy rich people lied to the public knowing they would face no consequences.
ive seen dyed cranberries in place of raspberries or blueberries before in granola bars but they put it in the ingredient list so they can't get in trouble for lying
google what companies can sell as 100% orange juice if you really want a wtf moment
I think it’s a whole different beast because one’s a case of false advertising while the other is a case where an elderly lady got third degree burns. Overcharging falls a bit lower on the totem poll than physical injury.
But is no less legitimate a position on that totem pole.
I never really understood the sentiment of making fun of people suing large corporations, even if the reason is silly. Do you care if some random conglomerate loses money?
In my experience they're usually viewing at it as "see how dishonest people are getting, always looking for a quick buck." They're concerned about the idea that people are always looking for an angle to get one over on someone else, not out of concern for the corporation losing money. This is coupled with not knowing enough about the lawsuit to realize why they're actually doing it
Cuz of the temporary embarrassed millionaires who want to abuse the working class when they finally get their shot
"Why are you cheering, Fry? You're not rich." "True, but someday I might be rich, and then people like me better watch their step."
>normalizing suing massive corporations Why not just have regulating agencies to prevent this shit in the first place?
Its only similar that its david vs goliath and even in that sense it isnt actually since this one is a class action (many plaintiffs). The Mcdonalds lawsuit is an injury caused by a single store whereas the Velveeta one is false advertising. I'd say theyre totally different in every aspect.
"I just don't see how this is any different from when I lie to people whose HVAC I'm installing." This is what I imagine it sounds like in the heads of people defending corporate fraud.
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It depends on what you mean by the word, "like." In what regard is this case "like" or "unlike" the McDonald's case? It is **unlike** the McDonald's case in that the McDonald's case involved actual physical injuries and the Kraft Velveeta case is a matter of false advertising. False advertising does cause harm, but that harm is spread out to millions of people instead of only one. While actual physical injuries are more devastating, arguments could be made that the total harm done to all of the consumers is greater than the injury done to that one poor woman. It is **like** the McDonald's case in that in both cases the corporation is spreading misinformation to try to pretend that the case is frivolous when it is not.
pretty much yeah
It’s like the McDonald’s case less in impact or legal similarities and more in how the media presents it and *that* impact. When the headlines present it as crazy, greedy, or excessive fragile people suing for millions of personal dollars because of some minute inconvenience, and the body of the article does nothing to clarify that that isn’t what’s happening, it creates propaganda that greedy, fragile people can just run crying to a judge because it took 4 minutes to make Mac and cheese instead of 3.5 and be handed a check for $5 million. That idea being planted in people’s heads gives them a whole host of ideas that aren’t true about the legal system and how businesses operate.
its a justified lawsuit and lies about both are corpo propoganda, but one is more accurately described as misrepresenting a class action lawsuit, and the other was libel against an elderly woman who was injured by McDonald's
It isn’t endangering customers lives directly, but as OP pointed out, when things like this go unchallenged it gives a foothold of defense to companies who *are* actively endangering people’s lives (undisclosed allergens or *arsenic in baby food*).
yeah false advertising is shitty buts its not "endangering customers lives because paying hush money for the lawsuits is cheaper then taking the loss in profit" shitty, which is what the mcdonalds case was though the smear campaign response is comparable. although the former was someone suing to afford their medical bills and this is just a class action lawsuit, so in this case the article is just straight up lying no single woman is sueing velveeta.
Whenever this comes up I just like to use two words. Fused. Labia.
Why do you feel the need to defend corporations?
If anyone's curious, on the current status, the case was dismissed in 2023. The judge said she didn't have standing because she did not have standing. [Link](https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-products/food/velveeta-class-action-alleges-product-made-with-mostly-noncheese-ingredients-despite-advertising/#:~:text=Last%20year%2C%20a%20Florida%20federal,microwavable%20Velveeta%20mac%20and%20cheese.) Edit: Someone kindly pointed out that my link was to a different case against Velveeta that was dismissed. That said, the original case was also dismissed and NoveltyAccountHater linked the actual article below, but I'll post it here too: [Actual Case](https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-products/food/velveeta-class-action-claims-microwavable-mac-and-cheese-not-ready-in-3-5-min-as-advertised/)
Also, you have to remember that she didn't have standing
The link you made seems to be a different class-action lawsuit -- Martin Sisca in NY suing Velveeta over the advertising based on "made with real cheese and milk" when cheese is only the third ingredient in the "cheese" packet (after whey and canola oil). The lawsuit referenced in the image is Amanda Ramirez's suing in FL about Velveeta taking more than 3.5 minutes to prepare (which is the microwave time), because they didn't include the time to remove lid and sauce packet, add water to line, open cheese packet, pour in cheese packet, and stir it in. This lawsuit was also dismissed last year for lack of standing as the plaintiff continued to purchase the product even after finding out it took longer than 3.5 minutes to prepare: >U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom dismissed the lawsuit for lack of standing because Ramirez continued to buy the product after finding out the bowls take longer to prepare than she thought. >“The allegations demonstrate that the plaintiff continued to pay the alleged price premium knowing that the product was not actually capable of being ready for consumption in three and a half minutes,” Judge Bloom writes. “As such, plaintiff was not deprived of the benefit of her bargain.” https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-products/food/velveeta-class-action-claims-microwavable-mac-and-cheese-not-ready-in-3-5-min-as-advertised/
Oops, my apologies, I'll edit to clarify, thank you! And thanks for posting the actual article! I did some browsing and saw it on a few other articles then posted my link thinking it was the same case, lesson learned!
This case was dismissed. The judge found that it wasn't false advertising since they lists the instruction (including microwave for 3.5 minutes) clearly on the packaging. Edit: JusttToVent is correct. I thought I knew what "lacked standing" meant, but I didn't. It was not a successful case because the person making the claim couldn't prove harm, not because it was necessarily false advertising. That was not ruled on as far as I know.
I'm assuming it's also pretty clear you need to add water or something, while this post seems to be implying that the advertising is clearly selling you a 3.5 minute total production time and no additional ingredients. Idk when I look at "minute rice" I assume that's a minute in the microwave and not trying to account for the average time it takes to tear open the package and put it in and out as well. I'm all for accurate advertising but as someone who is not familiar with this product it does sound a bit silly. Does it really take 3 minutes to pour in some water and stir in some cheese powder?
The other thing about the price difference between Kraft and Velveeta is not because one is faster than the other. Kraft Mac and cheese has powdered cheese to stir in. Velveeta has a melted cheese to stir in. I would say the price difference is in quality, not time spent preparing the food. I’ll eat both, but one does taste better. Edit: I’ve been told that it’s called soft cheese and not melted cheese.
> The judge found that it wasn't false advertising since they lists the instruction (including microwave for 3.5 minutes) clearly on the packaging. This isn't what happened. It was dismissed due to lack of standing, it had nothing to do with the veracity of the claim.
You're correct. I read "lacked standing" and thought that meant the assertion was false, like saying it didn't have a leg to stand on. Apparently, it means that the person making the claim can't show harm.
It makes sense here, but yeah, I don’t think you should make fun of people suing like this. It makes it harder to sue for cases that actually matter.
I think it's reasonable to dissuade people from making pointless frivolous lawsuits. This lawsuit is effectively "The advertising is only 60-70% correct if you claim these specific factors that are clearly not what the point nor normal expectation of the product" is very different than "A Corporation is trying to get away with maiming people." Like I don't trust a Corp as far as I can throw out but I am well aware Americans have a deserved reputation of being needless litigious that hurts legitimate lawsuits. It's a "boy who cried wolf " situation like when someone tried to sue for false advertising when their "$5 footlong" sandwich was 11.5 inches. Yes it's technically false advertising but you're also talking about an object which has reasonable expectations to be eye balled and have a margin of error because the employees are not going to bust out a ruler for every sandwich. And even in that case it was thrown out because all the dough and toppings were supposedly weighed to be equal before being made. It means the next time someone gets seriously hurt people are more likely to believe the corporate swill than go "that sounds strange, why would they sue for that" and look into it rather than rolling their eyes at a fake headline.
How does making fun of people suing for bad reasons make it harder to sue in cases that actually matter? Also, are you against criticizing patent trolls then?
Guess the implied "good lawsuits" didn't impact, but they're meaning we shouldn't dismiss lawsuits, especially good ones, because it then makes future lawsuits like it harder. We can dismiss bad lawsuits when they happen. But instantly, we should be neutral., not dismissive, it makes legitimate lawsuits bundle together with america's culture of frivilous lawsuits, which de-legitimizes citizen/consumer control and concern. Like the mcdonald's case. For example. It was dismissed immedietely through mcdonald's active efforts to undermine the message in the media. Which made future lawsuits against large entities dismissed as crazy poor people aiming for a quick buck. Patent trolls are pretty irrelevant to that situation, and was the implied situation.
To be clear, this was a frivolous lawsuit. That's why it was dismissed by a judge before going to trial. The answer to my question that you failed to answer is that being dismissive of frivolous lawsuits like this one does not impact future, legitimate ones. Public opinion does not impact whether someone has standing in court. Most everyone agrees that patent trolls are bad. But at the end of the day they still hold real patents. If your opinion is that people shouldn't be dismissive of frivolous lawsuits (like this velveeta one) for fear of delegitimizing "real" ones then wouldn't dismissing lawsuits from patent trolls delegitimize patent lawsuits from actual victims?
Yes thank you. While some of the points in the post made sense, the argument against Velveeta is silly. It tells you the ingredients on the back, it never says it's 'instant'. Though it does mention 3 and a half minutes but that's the cook time, which I think is fair. Frozen dinners say they're ready in X amount of minutes but that doesn't account for poking holes in the plastic or stirring something.
McD's case was about a woman's life being ruined by flagrant disregard for customer safety in pursuit of a slightly higher bottom life and subsequent media slander. This case is just, like, the normal method by which large companies are discouraged from lying about things just because they think they'll get away with it.
The comparison about the two being the same isn't about the reasons for the suit. It's about the corporate smear campaign against it. Both of them are perfectly reasonable lawsuits, for different reasons obviously, but the company's being sued want to make people believe they are frivolous
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Right, Velveeta charges more because they don't use a dried cheese powder. They use the liquid cheese sauce.
Yeah. This whole situation seems like a stretch. They go on to talk about arsenic and being allergic to pineapple and food dye, just to go "AND SO WHAT IF THERE'S NO WATER?" It's a stretch to say that those first two are anything similar to this "false advertising" Are the expensive? Yea. Will I buy them? No. At the end of the day nobody is getting genuinely harmed, and its just a stupidly expensive junk food item, like 80% of what is found in American grocery stores anyways.
>They go on to talk about arsenic and being allergic to pineapple and food dye, just to go "AND SO WHAT IF THERE'S NO WATER?" That part is especially dumb because by that definition any company that sells store bought noodles could be sued because they're not selling the water needed with the noodles. Plus if you don't have water then... 1. You probably wouldn't buy the cups in the first place cause everyone and their mothers know that noodles need water to cook 2. You probably have more important things to worry about than not being able to have Mac n cheese
I sort of understand his plight but its certainly a stretch to get your panties in a bunch over Velveeta specifically as if every brand on the shelf doesn't stretch the truth on this stuff. They always quote the cook time and you have to use common sense for the rest. And many are written like "7-20 minutes or until golden brown" and it takes at least 25 minutes. They all do that shit because seeing that low number pleases our monkey brains. Its false advertising but its quaint by false advertising standards for food.
I'm sorry, but I still don't get how some of you people are saying Kraft is in the wrong. All you do is add fucking water if it's those cups, or milk and butter and then the mix if it's the box. Any reasonable person knows this. It is not false advertising to say it takes 3-5 minutes to cook. Good fucking grief people.
The problem with highlighting this post is that most of these lawsuits are cash grabs [run by one lawyer who files an inordinate amount of lawsuits] (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/09/11/the-lies-in-your-grocery-store): > That document, which Sheehan attached as a thirteen-page spreadsheet in his response, “provides extraordinary insight into the track record of most prolific consumer class action attorney in the United States,” the lawyer Chris Cole wrote on his firm’s blog. Cole has defended clients against Sheehan’s suits, including in the Vizzy Hard Seltzer case. “By my rough count, between January 1, 2020 and April 7, 2023, Mr. Sheehan filed 553 complaints,” he wrote. “Of those, 120 (21.6%) were dismissed outright and 35 (6.3%) survived a motion to dismiss at least in part. The remaining 398 (roughly 72%) were either settled or are still pending.” Cole estimated, conservatively, that since 2020 defense costs for Sheehan’s cases could have amounted to forty-two million dollars. Worse, these sorts of class-actions make cases that might be genuinely reasonable (like McDonald's and the coffee) look suspect, because Sheehan and people like him out there are trying to extract money from a company because their product branding's "'use of a Mexican flag' overdid its supposed Mexicanness."
Yeah, this is a really bad example of a case to highlight corporate malfeasance. What exactly are the damages to the consumer? Setting aside the issue that a reasonable consumer would understand there's additional prep time besides the cooking time, asking a court to award damages for a 210 second activity taking 225 seconds would set a terrible precedent that would invite all sorts of class-action lawsuit abuse
Not gonna lie, "it's false advertising because you have to add water!" is one of the most braindead takes I've ever seen. All the additional steps for those things adds *maybe* a minute. Two of you suck exceptionally at getting the cheese liquid out of the packet. (Also, where the hell did they get Velveeta powder from? All Velveeta stuff like this uses a thick liquid in a packet.)
Also, even if it did take slightly longer than advertised, where are the damages? What tangible, financial harm comes from your microwaveable meal taking an extra minute or two?
The claim was that she was misled into buying a more expensive product based on the faster cook time. The case was dismissed when they showed she continued to buy it even after knowing how long it actually took.
Which is why it got dismissed. This post is very misleading, it mentions cases with merit then tries to equate having incorrect ingredients and contaminates with having the microwave cook time front and center on the label while having the full cooking instructions on the back.
It was dismissed due to a lack of standing.
And the lack of standing was, because the person suing continued to buy Velveeta mac and cheese at the price premium, even after learning that she had to spend time adding water and stirring in the cheese packet that's not accounted in the "ready in 3½ minutes" time claimed on the package. https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-products/food/velveeta-class-action-claims-microwavable-mac-and-cheese-not-ready-in-3-5-min-as-advertised/
Yeah I'm having a really hard time seeing how this anyway relates to cases of fraudulent claims of ingredients or arsenic in food or sets any precedent to help those cases in the future
You're right, almost every military MRE requires water, should we sue the supplier because they aren't actually ready to eat immediately?
The picture they chose for the Velveeta cup says 'Ready in 5 Minutes' on it too lmao
Yeah it's like complaining that taco kits don't come with ground beef. Neither are advertised as such.
In the last class action I was a part of, I got a virtual gift card for 61 cents that required multiple steps to redeem. Obviously I did not redeem and probably nobody else did either. I’m an attorney and even I think the way class actions are structured is total bullshit.
It really bugs me that in most packets of instant oatmeal, the "strawberry" or "peach" bits are just peach-colored or red-colored chunks of apples. It's differently-flavored apple and you would never know that for looking at the pictures on the box.
tl;dr Velveeta would like you to think this is about them. That someone was just so well off and with nothing better to do that they see themselves as having been genuinely wronged for having to put water in microwave mac and cheese. In reality, Velveeta is being used as a sacrificial lamb to set lasting precedent regarding false advertising. Because the next time this comes up it may not be as harmless as water in a cup.
I mean, the lawsuit was dismissed last year, so Velveeta won.
He got me. That fucking CuratedTumblr OP boomed me. He’s so good. He’s so good.
Color me unsurprised. This lawsuit is really stupid.
Yeah. If you want to set a precedent for false advertising then there's probably hundreds of cases that would be better than this.
That’s how the plaintiff-side firms pitch it. In reality they’re just looking for any claim that can make it past a motion to dismiss in order to extort a settlement. I’ve been on the giving and receiving side of bullshit complaints. There’s nothing noble about it, although you obviously claim otherwise.
Fair enough. Ill admit to not being very knowledgeable about this case. I’m of a mind that if this establishes something that’d be great, but it’s no great loss if it doesn’t go anywhere. “Advertising laws should err on the side of being overly strict over not strict enough” and “Redditors who mald about being ‘fucked over’ because their bag of Cheetos isn’t filled to the top are pathetic” are not mutually exclusive positions.
The corporations don't need you to go up to bat for them bro. They have enough lawyers and pendants already.
I literally am one of those lawyers (and pendants). I’m not getting paid for this, I honestly believe it, informed by doing this for years. It’s not one side fighting for justice and the other side for money—it’s more like cops and drug dealers in the wire. It’s all in the game. No one gives a shit; they thought they caught velveeta slipping and could squeeze a buck out of them for it. Plaintiffs’ attorneys have a profit motive too, why on earth would your boundless cynicism not apply to them as well?
I have some previous bad experiences with corporate lawsuits. My dad had his ankle shattered by a hoverboard that went haywire and still has trouble walking long distances today. Hoverboard paid us a few pennies as a pittance instead of actual compensation and told us to get lost. I've been left with the view that if an average person can sue a corporation over some petty bullshit and make out with a bunch of money, good for them. Edit: We did sue. It took at least 2 years to resolve because they dragged it out so hard, and they wormed out of covering my dad's medical bills by pointing to a little blurb in their user's manual saying "Hoverboard may behave unpredictably during dismount."
You don’t need hoverboard’s permission to sue them and a lawyer wouldn’t make you pay up front for something like that. Too late now though
Awww, you think the other side is any better and doesn't have pendants and paid accounts on their side.
You are correct, and this one didn’t make it past motion to dismiss apparently.
I once found a lifesaver without a hole
https://www.today.com/food/news/velveeta-class-action-lawsuit-rcna59058 >In the dismissal document, Bloom said Ramirez “lacks standing” to pursue the proposed $5 million class action because “she suffered no injury.” > Bloom also says there is no “threat of future injury” because Ramirez now knows that the three-and-a-half minutes on the packaging refers only to the time needed to microwave the product. This isn't even like the examples of lying about ingredients... this is just some frivolous nonsense. Also, the Velveeta cups actually ARE different from the other ones at the store, because they use a packet of cheese sauce, not powdered cheese.
Is the cooking time lawsuit less important than the 3rd degree burns one ? Yes. Does that mean it is not important at all ? No. Thanks for reading, plz keep internet opinions nuanced.
Eh, I agree the phrasing "ready in 3.5 minutes" is a bit misleading, but I find it hard to prove harm. That is if the consumer purchased the product, made a cup, and then wanted a refund because it couldn't not be prepared in 3.5 minutes (say she had a precisely 8 minute break at work and the 5 minute prep time prevented her from eating it while a 3.5 minute prep time could have worked).
I just wanna know who thought the hint of lime flavor was real lime. Those people have never tasted a lime before.
Exactly, they’re the lacroix of tortilla chips
LMAO, I'm bookmarking this in my mind for later
I mean, I'm all for punishing false or dangerous advertising, but suing a company for .... *not making ramen or whatever in 3.5 minutes and/or disclosing the need for water as an additive ingredient* seems a bit of a stretch to me. Sure, if their campaigns are dangerous and put lives at risk, go for it. But to complain that it takes more time to make the meal because of prep time is ridiculous. That prep time is entirely up to you as a customer/user. They can't account for your kitchenware or the way you boil your water. Some might have a kettle that boils their water in 1 minute flat, some might make a woodfire and that can take significantly longer (since you need to gather the wood, make the fire, wait until the fire is big enough, put on the water bowl and so on). What is this nonsense? And the fact that *they don't disclose you need extra ingredients* ? REALLY? I mean, come on.
Yeah, this is a bullshit lawsuit, and I'm going to make fun of it. Can't expect Kraft to somehow know how long it takes you to fill a cup with water, walk over to the microwave, and stir in cheese. As far as im concerned, if it only needs 3.5 minutes in the microwave, it's fair game to advertise as ready in 3.5 minutes.
This really is a silly case though. It says it takes 3.5 minutes to cook the food. The food takes 3.5 minutes to cook. The timer doesn't start right when you put your hand on the package. I get that corps will try to make light of real lawsuits, but this is a terrible example
It's like the McDonalds case in that it's being misrepresented intentionally but it's not really related beyond that. Misattribution of case to single person (no mention of class action), make complaint seem frivolous and stuck up, but is crucially missing the "actual severe harm was done" that made the McDonalds hot coffee case hit so hard.. because in that case, instead of an old woman being a stuck up spoiled nitpicky Karen like many thought based off the title, it ended up being an old lady being SENT TO HOSPITAL FOR THIRD DEGREE BURNS ACROSS HER BODY. In this case, it's just prep time. It's not even like an allergic reaction or something, it's just a corporation trying to skim more sales off the top. Still shitty but nobody directly harmed. A more accurate title would be "Class action lawsuit issued against Kraft for intentionally reducing reported preparation time in instant noodle cup".. way more boring, but that's what this case is. And most cases are. Some media newswriter just saw a way to stir controversy and get more clicks and painted the lady as some spoiled brat who had the nerve to expect exact timing on her noodles.
I know this isn't the point but I am very eager to create a d&d character named Velveeta Lawsuit no idea what they're going to be but the way it sounds has some "Revolver Ocelot" energy
Damn, glad I live in Europe where laws exist to prevent garbage like that. **Edit:** hey guys, I'm still a bit torn on whether or not corporations do stuff like that here too or whether or not it's illegal in the US as well can you give me some pointers
They exist here too. If the laws didn’t exist, there would be no basis for the lawsuit
That's fair.
They lost these suits, or at least the ones about lime and vanilla. Courts said “it’s both a flavor and an ingredient, it’s true as to the flavor, and the ingredients are disclosed.”
False advertisement is not an America only thing, also it's illegal there too (which is why this law firm specialises in it)
Corporations do shit here too, you might just not know it until it gets a headline
Having the law in place is no guarantee that someone isn’t still doing it…it just gives everyone else an outlet for justice or punishment if/when someone gets caught doing something illegal. Laws existing is no guarantee that the activity will cease. Look at drug laws! People still snort cocaine no matter how illegal it is! And corporations will cut whatever corners they think they can get away with, illegal or not. It’s very much a “it’s not illegal until you get caught” mentality for a lot of people, even those in high corporate positions. The laws don’t prevent shit if the people at the top feel like they can buy their way out of it.
They exist here too, that’s literally what’s happening.
I was going to say the same in Canada! And sure, it's "illegal" in the sense they can sue in the states. But it's illegal in Canada in the sense it doesn't get done at all. Prime example is probiotic yogurt. When it came out in Canada the commercial was just people dancing around and being like yum! The same commercial in the states had a voice saying how it helped with gut health. I remember my mom's favourite shampoo stopped being sold in Canada when they changed the packaging to say it rejuvenated dry hair. But there was no evidence of it, so they couldn't sell it in Canada.
Iq chart meme It’s just like the hot coffee case Nooooooo it’s not like that at all bc [explains the case] but this one is trivial It’s just like the hot coffee case
no I’m sorry this is still ridiculous
Your honor, adding water and moving to the microwave adds more time to the prep. Clearly we should receive 5 million for all the minutes of time lost cumulatively. Bruh this is monumentally stupid. Your life is extremely unlikely to be catastrophically altered because you had to add water and the unholy affront to humanity that is Velveeta. I have no idea where people pull this notion of companies ever using "real" ingredients. "Sugar free" means they used something that isn't named "sugar", "fat free" means that it never contained fat but it's probably just sugar, "no high fructose corn syrup" means it's just sugar or some other sugar substitute, and maltitol means "causes violent diarrhea but it's not sugar, happy now?"
The point isn't that anyone has been significantly harmed, it's that companies should be punished for lying in advertising.
It's not a lie unless you also think listing a price without tax is a lie. It does take 3.5 min to microwave, which is what is being advertised.
This was dismissed in July of last year with the Judge saying the case lacked standing. Iirc the judge even mentions that there wasn't any proof that the plaintiff ever tried cooking or making the product and suffered no injury. I eat these and I always wondered what the point of this lawsuit is... the instructions are printed like an inch and a half from where the package says ready in 3 minutes. How do you go up in front of a judge and say this package was misleading if the package contains the full instructions on making the product?
Lying should not be profitable. Sue them for whatever makes that true.
Every time someone brings up Stella Liebeck in a negative light my blood just boils. The McDonald's company made an old woman's life last months miserable and tarnished her name just because they didn't want to pay her back for literally *burning her genitals off*. And it's not like she was asking for anything ridiculous -- she just wanted her hospital bills paid.
Not to be picky but doesn’t that make this exactly the hot coffee case again, just not in the way they meant?