Asymmetrical Information

...because you lit up a roll of burning leaves and stuck it in your mouth twenty times a day for forty years.

Why would anyone light a roll of burning leaves?

My favorite quote from this story, back when it was reported by the Washington Post, is: "[Lead council Richard] Daynard said that while the legal theory is ready, the challenge is finding the right set of parents to sign on as plaintiffs for the class-action case. "It's taking us longer than we expected," he said."

So they don't actually have any angry parents or obese children begging for justice. All they have is a legal theory, a plaintiff-friendly state, and a strong desire to sap billions from a juicy target. Arrgh.

Just to play the nanny-state lefty for a sec, which I'm not, remember that as with tobacco, the issue isn't simply that a teen decided to have a Coke and we should sue Coke for that. It's that the drink/smoke company knowingly targets youth with an unhealthy product, using slightly underhanded means. With smokes, Joe Camel. With Coke, my understanding is that they make sweetheart donations of computers and the like to schools, which cash-strapped schools can scarcely resist, in exchange for the right to put Coke machines there. And yes, youth (even high schoolers) are more impressionable. Coke knows this, which is why it is worth it to them to throw computers away in order to hook those youth.

Etc. etc. I am not really saying these lawsuits have merit. (And my fridge, even at this very moment is packed with Coke. They got me! But then again I grew up in Atlanta. A bit after lunch I'll be at the gym, for my sins...) But still, the issue isn't just the consumer's choice, but how the company tried to get them to make that choice.

It seems to me that if the goal is to rid public schools of soda machines, that there is an easier and more effective way of accomplishing that goal than this lawsuit. no?

A much more important problem in our food supply is caffeic acid. Here is a description of its effects:

"Caffeic acid was tested for carcinogenicity by oral administration in mice, it produced renal cell adenomas in females, and a high incidence of renal tubular cell hyperplasia in animals of each sex."

Lawyers should immediately bring lawsuits against the producers of products that contain caffeic acid. And those responsible for the poisoning of our children are organic grocers and farmers.

They produce the following products that contain natural amounts of caffeic acid:

Lettuce, 14.9 g contains Caffeic acid, 7.90 mg
Potato, 54.9 g contains Caffeic acid, 867 µg
Pear, 3.29 g contains Caffeic acid, 240 µg

My point being that everyone that produces food can be sued for something.

You know what the second-most-purchased item is from vending machines on school campuses? Bottled water. When every corridor in every school has multiple water fountains, children are targeted for fraudulent water purchases, paying hard-earned pennies for water which isn't any different from what comes out of the tap. This is the REAL scandal! When is the state going to stop this exploitation of poor kids? A dollar for twelve ounces of water?? And you know who owns the major bottled water companies - Coca Cola! And probably HALLIBURTON!!!! This is criminal!

I trust the companies...they told me their products were healthy ...so why the lawsuits? that stuff is good for you right? especially smoking! Every consumer should be smart enough to see throught the rhetoric of the producers of every single product they consume in a day. If they are not... tough.

With all the things the gubmint does that it shouldn't bother doing, how can it be that so many things are actionable but not illegal?

Jeez, I tell my wife to stop drinking so much soda, but it's not even that bad for you.

Why would anyone light a roll of burning leaves?

Cuz they ran out of bud...

That's why I'm not a plaintiff's lawyer too. I still remember when I took torts in law school. What a shock--as I said to a classmate, "You mean that if I see scaffolding above a building entrance and I walk under it and a brick drops on my head, it's not my fault?!?" I still have a hard time (read: impossible) reconciling that concept with my world view of personal responsibility.

Triticale: That would be better said as, "Why would anyone light a roll of burning leaves again.?

Rex: "I still have a hard time (read: impossible) reconciling that concept with my world view of personal responsibility."

Well obviously this is meant to replace personal responsibility. (While making liberals obscenely rich, natch.) Culture war, conflict of visions, and all that. Savvy?

Rex, '

what is so shocking about that? It isn't your fault that the brick fell and it should be safe to walk under a scaffolding. You have to do it lots of times in a city like NY. Personal responsibility is fine, shouldn't the person who caused the brick to fall bear at least some of the responsibility for the falling brick?

When I was in high school in the 70's we had Coke machines all over the place - and they didn't sell diet stuff except Tab (which nobody bought) or water (the idea of paying for water would have seemed insane). We were subjected to relentless, if hokey (remember that "I'd like to teach the world" crap)advertising. And believe it or not, fat kids were an aberration. Yes, there were a few, but in general obesity was not an issue.

Rex writes

"You mean that if I see scaffolding above a building entrance and I walk under it and a brick drops on my head, it's not my fault?!?"

That so much of the sales are bottled water indicates that schools should provide a better water dispensing system. I remember drinking fountains that dispensed over-chlorinated water, tasting plainly of all the disolved minerals and metals it conntained.

For the equivalent cost back then, assuming drinking in class was allowed, I would have GLADLY purchased bottles of Evian or Poland Spring (or Coke or Mountain Dew).

The fact that kids need to by HYDRATED through the school day seems to be ignored by education professionals. The soft drink industry figured this out a long time ago and moved in with complete moral American corporate efficiency.

The schools should just provide cold, purified tap water at convenient localtions where students can quickly fill up bottles. Plastic bottles, perhaps plain or with a school logo or some such, would be for sales for cost (25 cents?). School classes or clubs that wanted to sell coffee or juice or tea or whatever could ply their wares by filling bottles in a what is a local academic laboratory to study markets. If the football team wants to sell coke to buy new uniforms, good for them.

The school administrations should insure that kids have free, pure drinking water at school, and these lawyers should get a life.

My son was required to bring a sports bottle or equivalent of water from home every day to kindergarten in Houston. In first grade and tehreafter, it was not mandatory but was permitted. They had Pizza Hut pizza in the cafeteria, but no soda...

Wow, good proofing. "THEREafter."

michigander-

You mean if I set up a scaffolding above a building entrance and I drop bricks off the scaffolding onto people entering the building, it's not my fault? Wow. How far does this go?

Well... If someone stuffs $1.50 into a slot on the side of your building, then stands around for five seconds waiting for one of these 'bricks' to appear, then they take the 'brick' and are somehow 'involuntarily compelled' to beat themselves over the head with it- can we agree it might not be your fault???

Perhaps I should go heavy into brick futures ...

Seriously, though, $.02 from somebody who works for a high school here in LA. Aside from the cafeteria, there are two sources of food/drink sales on campus -- the student store and vending machines. Until recently, when certain health standards came down from on high, you could buy all manner of junk from either source -- potato chips, soda, cookies, candy bars, etc. Why? Because they sold, and they sold well. Now it's snack bars, water/juice, ramen, etc., and sales have plummeted. The junk food is still available at a store right across the street, so very little has been accomplished on the nutrition front.

Also, as far as campus drinking fountains go, since they get used as trash receptacles more often than not, I don't blame the students for not drinking from them.

The schools should just provide cold, purified tap water at convenient localtions where students can quickly fill up bottles.

Nice idea, but how? With many drinking fountains in older schools, the problem extends from the fountain itself all the way back to the master plumbing inlet. Redoing the entire water system of a finished building could run into the millions, and that's aside from the problem that the incoming water often doesn't taste so good, either. Some types of fountains contain filtration gear but somebody has to maintain that, and it's expensive.

Maybe you could install Deep Rock-style water dispensers everywhere...but no paper cups, because the hallways would soon be littered with them (and paper cups in those kinds of volumes eventually become expensive). Okay, so students can fill their own bottles...but the machines themselves would be subject to vandalism, and some idiot would run water all over the floor for kicks. If the floor is tile or terrazo, suddenly you have liability lawsuits on your hands; if it's carpet, and your climate is humid or the floor underneath happens to be wood, you have to get it dried out quickly else face risk of mold problems.

Maybe the dispensers could use a bulk-bottled supply but be comprised of a steel protective shell with padlocked access to the innards, but who is going to fund such a thing when many districts can barely afford to keep ahead of restroom vandalism?

The short answer is...a corporately-sponsored soft drink dispenser is free or even a negative expenditure (from the school's perspective) and the least subject to vandalism problems because people really enjoy its contents, hence tend to respect it more.

Achillea, you remind me of the "snack bar" at the computer lab in my own high school, where you could have two Ding-Dongs by way of lunch if you were willing to pay for them. People did. Beat what came out of the cafeteria much of the time.

anony-mouse,

Even kids have been trained to be fastidious about water now, which considering what they wil eat is just a little bizarre. If what comes out of the taps in the bathrooms is unsafe to drink, it's likely unsafe to wash your hands in either. If not, then let kids fill up water bottles from the bathroom sinks if they absolutely, positively can't get through a class without hydration. I just don't remember water being such a concern when I was in school. One colleague tells me that an initial ban on bottled anything during final exams at his school was cancelled after several students fiercely protested that they needed bottled water or they couldn't get through an exam.

I just don't remember water being such a concern when I was in school. One colleague tells me that an initial ban on bottled anything during final exams at his school was cancelled after several students fiercely protested that they needed bottled water or they couldn't get through an exam.

Yeah, it's worth remembering that until 15 years ago or so, people didn't need to be "hydrated" all the time. (In fact "hydration" had yet to replace its predecessor, "drinking".) Somehow kids managed to survive without water for an hour at a time.

Although, in our society's defense -- I notice people have started switching to Nalgene bottles and Camelbaks, from bottled water. Those look even sillier (it reminds me of when 90's college students walked around campus carrying expedition packs with ice axe loops and crampon ties, and the waist and chest belts secured) but at least it indicates some financial and environmental sanity.

Taco and Michigander,

Your thinking sounds sensible, and that's why tort law evolved the way it did in English Common Law. The problem that I've observed is that the whole negligence/tort thing acts against individual responsiblity. When the common law evolved, England was nowhere near the nanny state that it has become now, nor was the early U.S. Personal responsiblity and societal responsiblity are inversely proportional--as one increases, the other decreases. The most notable shift in the last 30 years has been the increase in societal responsibility for educating children with the concommitant decrease in parents taking personal responsibility for the same.

I see the whole negligence/tort evolution as increasing societal responsibility at the expense of personal responsibility. The British system has some checks and balances, primarily the loser pays tort system. Here in the U.S., the attorneys' fees are paid out of the nebulous "pain and suffering" component of damage awards and there is no penalty for bringing a probably frivolous lawsuit. And what we would call a frivolous lawsuit is not seen that way if there is any legal theory at all, no matter how far out it is, to support the damage claims. And a whole lot of judges go further than that and validate plaintiff's stupid actions by awarding them money! Remember that lady who sued McDonalds over the hot coffee she spilled on herself? She didn't just spill it; she held the styrofoam cup between her legs while trying to drive her car, squeezed a little to hard, and hot coffee gave her second degree burns in some painful places. Sad mishap, but entirely (in my view) due to her own stupidity.

I view walking under a scaffold where men are working (assuming there is a way to go in the building entrance without walking under the scaffolding) as being the same sort of stupidity. Awarding that sort of behaviour (which is what I think the damage award represents in that case) decreases personal responsibility. And I oppose, in general, societal models which decrease personal responsibility.

Remember that lady who sued McDonalds over the hot coffee she spilled on herself? She didn't just spill it; she held the styrofoam cup between her legs while trying to drive her car, squeezed a little to hard, and hot coffee gave her second degree burns in some painful places

You may or may not agree with the verdict, but the account you're giving is fiction. She was a passenger and the car was not moving. She received third degree burns and required skin grafts.

So I may have been wrong about those details, but the fact remains that she spilled the coffee by holding a styrofoam cup between her legs. I don't care if she was driving or not--that was still sheer stupidity, and it caused millions of us to get lukewarm coffee for years afterward.

So I may have been wrong about those details[...] I don't care if she was driving or not

They're not trivial details, they are the ones you felt important enough to mention.

You don't care if you were wrong? You felt it important enough to bring it up. Isn't it intellectually dishonest to advance a point to support your position and then call it irrelevant when you are wrong?

They're not trivial details, they are the ones you felt important enough to mention.

You don't care if you were wrong? You felt it important enough to bring it up. Isn't it intellectually dishonest to advance a point to support your position and then call it irrelevant when you are wrong?

First: Burn, strawman. That's not what he said. Second: Them details are unimportant in that they only ADVANCE the point he was trying to make. The facts are:

1. Coffee is hot. McDonald's coffee is even hotter than some, but that's how you get the most flavor out of the coffee beans, so it's hardly unreasonable to expect that a fresh cup of coffee will be hot.

2. The woman put the cup between her legs. That is not a secure position for ANYTHING liquid, and especially in a non-rigid container. Any person with normal mental faculties, especially an adult, should be capable of working that one out without additional tutelage. She simply got careless.

3. She was a passenger, not the driver, and the vehicle (you claim -- this part I hadn't heard before, but hey, why not?) wasn't even moving. This shoots down the far-fetched theory that her hands were unavoidably preoccupied and McDonalds induced her to injure herself by selling and delivering a hot beverage at the drive-through window.

What, again, was your point?

Moreover, the coffee spilled because she removed the lid, and the reason she suffered from third degree burns was that she sat in the coffee for ninety seconds after spilling it. Not that this has anything to do with what's being discussed. ^^

And here all I wanted to do was lay out some facts that bear on the general topic of our tort system. The Law of Unintended Consequences applies to me as well as our tort system!

Seriously, what is the goal of our system? If the goal is to make one whole after an injury, that can be done much cheaper by a no-fault system rather than a liability system and include lifetime medical expenses resulting from the injury too. If the goal is to let people win a "lottery" from an injury and enrich all the plaintiffs' attorneys out there, then keep the present liability system.

I found it amazing when we moved to Long Island that the first thought on anyone's mind was to get a lawyer and sue. Where I lived before, lawyers didn't get involved until the insurance company started jerking the victim around. Guess which place had higher auto insurance premiums? Among my daughter's friends on the Island, 7 out of 10 had gotten a lump sum payment from some sort of injury. That's crazy.

A side effect is that for any accident, people now believe that it had to be someone's fault. That kind of detracts from the meaning of "accident", now doesn't it? Some accidents just happen, and causation can't always be determined. But that doesn't stop people from thinking that causation can always be determined or that someone had to be at fault. I don't see this way of thinking as being good.

I know that there are horrific injuries that are compensated under our present tort system, but I'm trying to think past that and decide whether the decrease in personal responsibility outweighs the beneficial aspects of the tort system.

Another difference to be seen is this: If I smoke, there is pretty much nothing I can do that can reverse the effects other than quit. As long as you smoke, your body will be hurt by it. Drinking high sugar content sodas are not like that. Of course there are associated health risks, like increased risk of obesity and its associated health problems, but the fact is that many people drink sodas with NO health problems, while no person smokes regularly without eventually impacting his health. Secondly, you can exercise: a regular workout schedule will eliminate any problems from drinking sodas, so if you choose to drink them you can avoid all complications by exercise (or, if blessed with good genes and a high metabolism, merely good dieting may do). The problems associated with sodas, like obesity, are much more difficult to disentangle from a host of other contributing factors. A plaintiff going after the soda companies must be willing to have his every single eating/drinking/lifestyle choice scrutinized. With tobacco, however, there isn't a great deal of competition for the causation of emphysema, so its much easier to pinpoint blame.

One final point: no lawsuit against the soda companies will succeed until drinking a Coke becomes declasse like smoking is. I don't see evidence for that happening in the short term, because drinking a soda is much harder to demonize than the obvious targets with smoking (yellow teeth, bad breath, etc.). But don't underestimate the power of people acting "for the children" (a phrase usually stated right before your liberties are curtailed) to implement propaganda in the schools. Once the middle class and upper classes are convinced, soda companies are doomed.

J...
When I was in high school in the 70's we had Coke machines all over the place - and they didn't sell diet stuff except Tab (which nobody bought)

Uh.. you do realize that Tab was _the_ diet soda then, right? For a long time, Tab was the only diet soda on the market.

In Paris some enterprising frenchie is bottling tap water, and calling it "L'eau de Paris"! He's doing quite well.
And you know French women never get fat.Alors!

hi meagan,
well, i have a lot of sympathy for those who want to sue the soda companies. its a captive market, with individuals who are still basically learning how to exercise self-control and how to manage sugar cravings. i dislike that school districts feel the need to do these deals, but given the lack of funding that many districts get, it feels like a no-win situation. as a teacher, its always fun dealing with sugar hyped students...

The bigger issue is not fattening kids, but the presence of DHMO in the soft drinks.

Dihydrogen monoxide:

* is also known as hydroxl acid, and is the major component of acid rain.
* contributes to the "greenhouse effect."
* may cause severe burns.
* contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.

See www.dhmo.org for more information!
* accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
* may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.
* has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.

See www.dhmo.org for more information.

1. Coffee is hot. McDonald's coffee is even hotter than some, but that's how you get the most flavor out of the coffee beans, so it's hardly unreasonable to expect that a fresh cup of coffee will be hot.

I thought that the reason why McDonald?s coffee was forty-degrees higher than that of most other restaurants is because it was served for people going through the drive-through and needed to stay hot by the time they arrived at their destination. In contrast, coffee served to people dining in a restaurant is usually consumed within minutes of it being served so that the patrons leave and free up a table for the next customer.

I?d be curious if now that McDonald?s is serving colder coffee if the unintended consequence is more drivers drinking coffee while driving (as opposed to waiting until they get to work or wherever), leading to more distracted drivers and more traffic accidents.

2. The woman put the cup between her legs. That is not a secure position for ANYTHING liquid, and especially in a non-rigid container. Any person with normal mental faculties, especially an adult, should be capable of working that one out without additional tutelage. She simply got careless.

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