Court Reinstates Fast-Food Lawsuit
A federal appeals court in New York ruled Tuesday that two teenagers were entitled to move forward with a lawsuit alleging that McDonald’s Corp., the world’s largest fast-food company, concealed health risks of Chicken McNuggets and made the youths obese.
The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals overruled a decision by U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet, who had dismissed the case last year.
Tuesday’s ruling was hailed by a Washington lawyer who had been a consultant on the case and lambasted by the company.
U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff, writing for a three-judge panel, said Ashley Pelman and Jazlen Bradley were entitled to seek further evidence to prove their case, which was based on a New York consumer protection law. The teenagers had eaten three to five times a week at McDonald’s outlets in the Bronx.
The suit alleges that the combined effect of McDonald’s promotional representations from 1987 to 2002 “was to create the false impression that its food products were nutritionally beneficial and part of a healthy lifestyle, if consumed daily,” wrote Rakoff, an appointee of President Clinton. The suit also alleges that McDonald’s failed to adequately disclose that its use of certain additives and its food processing rendered some of its foods substantially less healthful than represented.
The New York statute the plaintiffs are using does not require them to prove that they relied on the company’s representations.
The statute, Rakoff noted, “extends well beyond common-law fraud to cover a broad range of deceptive practices.”
When he dismissed the case, Sweet, an appointee of President Carter, said the plaintiffs had failed to draw an “adequate causal connection between their consumption of McDonald’s food and their alleged injuries.” But Rakoff said the plaintiffs were not required to make such detailed allegations at this stage of the case.
The 2nd Circuit’s decision to reinstate the obesity case “opens the door not only for similar lawsuits against fast-food companies but also permits the plaintiffs to demand previously secret documents” from McDonald’s, said John Banzhaf III, a George Washington University law professor who has advised the plaintiffs’ lawyer.
Walt Riker, a spokesman for Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald’s, reiterated the company’s position that the suit “makes no sense. We are confident that this frivolous suit will once again be dismissed.”
Last year, the House of Representatives, by a wide margin, passed a bill that would prohibit individuals from suing restaurants in state or federal court based on contentions that their food made customers fat. The measure, dubbed the “Cheeseburger Bill” on Capitol Hill and endorsed by the Bush administration, has not been voted on in the Senate.
Bloomberg News was used in compiling this report.
