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THE DEVIL DOG MADE ME DO IT Pulling a Fast One on Fast Food By Tucker Carlson in That's Outrageous, for Reader's Digest, December 2002 Caesar Barber loves fast food. For years, the New York City maintenance man ate four or five meals a week at McDonald's and Burger King. The more fast food he ate, the fatter he got, packing close to 300 pounds on a five-foot, ten-inch frame. After Barber's first heart attack, his doctor told him to change his diet. Barber didn't. Three years later, he had another heart attack. Along the way, he developed diabetes. Finally, he decided to take action. Caesar Barber didn't lose 100 pounds - that would have been difficult, and not very lucrative. Instead, he sued the fast food companies that sold him cheeseburgers, saying the food should have come with warning labels. "They said 100 percent beef," he explained. "I thought they meant it was good for you." Barber's lawyer claims that by the time his client learned the real truth about fast food, he could not stop eating it. He was addicted. You might think that Caesar Barber is the only person in America dumb enough to confuse fast food with health food, and the only one shameless enough to go after the burger makers. You would be wrong. There are a number of other tubby McCustomers lining up to join him. Barber is just the lead plaintiff in an expanding lawsuit filed in New York against McDoanld's, Wendy's, Burger King and KFC. There are certain to be more suits like it. A law professor at Northeastern University has already begun training lawyers in tactics they can use to squeeze money from burger manufacturers. Barber's attorneys often compare hamburgers to cigarettes. But there is at least one key difference: The legal war on tobacco succeeded mostly because tobacco is an addictive drug. When smokers said they could not stop smoking, juries believed them. Lawyers hoping to bankrupt Wendy's will have a tougher sell. Here's how Sam Hirsch, the lead lawyer in the Barber suit, responds when asked for evidence that fast food is addictive: "If you look at the Newsweek article a couple of weeks ago, it quotes a Yale professor who was quoted on the Dan Rather show saying it is addictive." Sam Hirsch is a personal injury lawyer, not a scientist; the "CBS Evening News" does not qualify as a peer-reviewed study. In fact, the Yale professor never actually claimed that fast food is physically addictive. It tastes good, sure. Some people eat quite a bit of it. But no one ever woke up with the shakes after quitting Big MACS. It's not even clear that fast food, in moderation, makes you fat. In other words, if you're going to sue fast food restaurants, you need another tack - like no one warned you that eating three Big Macs a day wasn't such a swift idea. Hirsch seems to know this, which is why he and other lawyers are planning a new front in the war on Big Foods: kids. "We're trying to start a separate lawsuit for children," he says. It's a well-worn path. Indeed, it's hard to think of a single social movement or government program that hasn't been justified by its supposedly positive effect on The Children. Children make the perfect cover. Everyone likes them, for one thing. They don't speak for themselves, for another. Anyone can become a self-appointed spokesman for five-year-olds. They'll never contradict you in public. Hirsch is already trolling for sympathetic kids he can parade before a jury. "We have on youngster who was three years old when he started eating McDonald's," Hirsch says. "By 11, in addition to McMuffins in the morning, he was supersizing in the afternoon." The boy, who is 15, now weighs over 200 pounds. Hirsch would be more justified in suing the boy's parents, who apparently failed to curb their son's supersizing. But parents generally aren't worth billions of dollars. McDonald's is. And the lawyers seem confident some of that money will soon be theirs. "When we got the smokers to sue the tobacco industry, everybody scoffed," said John Banzhaf, a Washington public-interest attorney who is an advisor in the Caesar Barber case. In the end, he says, "we won every single damn suit." Banzhaf may be right, and there's no reason the legal pinata party should stop there. Imagine the possibilities for trial lawyers: Runners suing Nike for sprained ankles. Drinkers suing Miller when they're too hungover to work. Parents suing Nintendo when their Game Boy-addicted children botch the SATs. It may seem ridiculous now. It won't if the suits against McDonald's succeed. If you're not responsible for where you have lunch, you're not responsible for anything. WORKING TOGETHER TO ATTAIN FAIRNESS | |
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