Court revives McDonald's obesity suit

[Rivet]

Judges allow deceptive advertising argument

NEW YORK (AP) -- An appeals court Tuesday revived part of a class-action lawsuit blaming McDonald's for making people fat, reinstating claims pertaining to deceptive advertising....

....
"If a person knows or should know that eating copious orders of supersized McDonald's products is unhealthy and may result in weight gain," Sweet had written, "it is not the place of the law to protect them from their own excesses."


Well, duh! :rolleyes:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/26/fast.food.lawsuit.ap/index.html

[jamesrage]

When will judges quit allowing these types of law suits?The people are ****ing idiots.
The idea that you can do something to yourself and sue somebody for it is just ludacris.
I think judges need to revoke the lawer's licenes,***** slap the **** out of the parents of that child and throw them in jail for being awful parents and give custady of that child to some one in that child's family who has common sense.

[beg your pardon]

McDonalds sorta sounds good right now.

[green lantern]

McDonalds sorta sounds good right now.it does :D

[JD3]

Judges allow deceptive advertising argument



Well, duh! :rolleyes:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/26/fast.food.lawsuit.ap/index.html


To play devils advocate, does this make a difference:

. . . law requires a plaintiff to show only that deceptive advertising was misleading and that the plaintiff was injured as a result.

Pick your company, but can a comany say or claim or mislead in any way it wants without some responsibility? I think that is a fair question.

[Turenne]

I suggest those that are suing MancDonalds actually take responsibility for there actions.I see nothing wrong with MacDonalds,the last time I checked selling food to the public is hardly wrong.There may be a case for banning all fast food restaurants,but picking on MacDonalds is simply cynical...

[beg your pardon]

Fat, lazy slobs need to start pointing their fingers at themselves.

Fast food rules in moderation.

[JD3]

I admit I took the discussion beyond McDonalds. And I am not familiar with their advertising, but if a company promotes its product as safe and healthy, do they hold some responsibility and is it possible for both the consumer and the company to have some responsibility?

That is the question I am asking if anyone wants to make a case either way.

[Seth928]

I say we target a class action lawsuit at the people who are a part of this claim for driving up health care costs.

[beg your pardon]

I don't think McDonalds or any other fast food restaurants advertise that their food is healthy, at least I have never gotten that out of any them.

I don't think they should be held responsible for people's overindulgence.

[JD3]

I say we target a class action lawsuit at the people who are a part of this claim for driving up health care costs.

Hummmm? Would limting them actually save much?

But both the General Accounting Office and the Congressional Budget Office criticize the 1996 study the Bush administration uses as their main support. These nonpartisan agencies suggest savings – if any – would be relatively small.
Analysis



In a speech in Little Rock, Arkansas on Jan. 26 the President said, “One of the major cost drivers in the delivery of health care are these junk and frivolous lawsuits.” He said rising malpractice insurance premiums and needless medical procedures ordered up out of fear of lawsuits cost federal taxpayers “at least” $28 billion a year in added costs to government medical programs. Bush’s Department of Health and Human Services claims total savings – public and private – of as much as $108 billion a year.

Those claims rest mainly on a single 1996 study by two Stanford economists who said caps on damage awards could hold down overall medical costs by 5% to 9%. They studied heart patients who were hospitalized, compared costs in states with and without limits on malpractice lawsuits, and then projected their findings to the entire health-care system.

But both the GAO and the CBO now question their sweeping conclusion. When the CBO attempted to duplicate the Stanford economists’ methods for other types of ailments they found found “no evidence that restrictions on tort liability reduce medical spending.”

“In short, the evidence available to date does not make a strong case that restricting malpractice liability would have a significant effect, either positive or negative, on economic efficiency, ” the CBO said.

(snip)

That “leading study” was a 1996 paper by Stanford economists Daniel P. Kessler and Mark McClellan. McClellan – who is both an economist and a physician – served more recently as President Bush’s senior White House policy director for health care, and is now the head of the Food and Drug Administration.

The Kessler-McClellan study is one of the few academic studies that has ever attempted to measure the cost of “defensive medicine” attributable to lawsuits. It did so by examining the cost of treating hospitalized heart patients in states that have caps on damage awards and other restrictions on malpractice suits, and comparing them with the costs of treating similar patients in states without such limits on lawsuits.

The Kessler-McClellan conclusion:

We find that malpractice reforms that directly reduce provider liability pressure lead to reductions of 5 to 9 percent in medical expenditures without substantial effects on mortality or medical complications. We conclude that liability reforms can reduce defensive medical practices.

The Kessler-McClellan study won the 1997 American Economics Association’s award in health economics.

However, a fact not mentioned in the Bush HHS paper is that several other studies of defensive medicine failed to find anywhere near such large costs. A 1990 study by the Harvard University School of Public Health “did not find a strong relationship between the threat of litigation and medical costs,” CBO said. And a 1999 study in the Journal of Health Economics found only tiny savings – less than three-tenths of one percent – when studying the cost of Caesarian sections in states with limits on lawsuits, compared to states without limits.

Finally, a 1994 study by the congressional Office of Technology Assessment found some added costs (under $54 million total) due to defensive radiology in children with head injuries and defensive Caesarian sections in certain women with difficult pregnancies. But the OTA study concluded: “it is impossible in the final analysis to draw any conclusions about the overall extent or cost of defensive medicine.”

What GAO and CBO Said

CBO and GAO both question whether the results Kessler and McClellan observed in hospitalized heart patients can be applied to patients in cancer wards, nursing homes, doctors’ offices, maternity wards and elsewhere.

In 1999 a GAO study said the evidence Kessler and McClellan cited was too narrow to provide a basis for estimating overall costs of defensive medicine:

Because this study was focused on only one condition and on a hospital setting, it cannot be extrapolated to the larger practice of medicine. Given the limited evidence, reliable cost savings estimates cannot be developed.

And on Jan. 8, 2004 , the Congressional Budget Office also said the Kessler-McClellan study wasn’t a valid basis for projecting total costs of defensive medicine.

When CBO applied the methods used in the study of Medicare patients hospitalized for two types of heart disease to a broader set of ailments, it found no evidence that restrictions on tort liability reduce medical spending. Moreover, using a different set of data, CBO found no statistically significant difference in per capita health care spending between states with and without limits on malpractice torts.

Worth noting: The nonpartisan CBO is now headed by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who previously was chief economist for President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers.

http://www.factcheck.org/article133.html

[Ophelia]

Just for this, it's McDonald's for dinner tonight. And if my cholesterol level goes up, it's my own fault. I bought the burger, right? :lol:

[JD3]

Just for this, it's McDonald's for dinner tonight. And if my cholesterol level goes up, it's my own fault. I bought the burger, right? :lol:

Works for me.

[beg your pardon]

I ended up going to Burger King instead.

[Ophelia]

McDonald's is closer for me. :D

[beg your pardon]

Me too but I havnt been to Burger King in like a year.

[Rivet]

They will probably settle out of court and end up putting warnings on all the food.

Big Mac - ** warning ** Eating this sandwich may lead to higher cholestrol, higher blood pressure, expanding waste line and acne breakouts