Another bite at the McDonalds apple, or the continued failure of modern journalism to be objective

I read a news article that a Mr. Jeromy "Yes, that is with an 'O'" Jackson has decided to sue McDonalds for failing to "hold the cheese.” While this isn’t as ridiculous as the Borat frat suit from a few months back, it certainly is close, based solely on the facts as described in this article. See Justin D. Anderson, Man Says Hold the Cheese, Claims McDonald’s Didn’t, Sues for $10 Million.

Even assuming, as one probably must here, that Jeromy did tell the worker to not put cheese on his sandwich, old Ronald McD has at least two things going for him. First, three of them ordered food and then drove them to a darkened room where they were "going to watch a movie." Did Jeromy’s friends eat Jeromy’s sandwich and simply failed to realize it? Were they sneaking McDonalds into a movie theater? All kidding aside, if he was that concerned over his allergy, why would he not have checked the sandwich WITH THE LIGHT ON before chomping down? I think that's a pretty common thing to do. I know I’m not the only one who has gone out to some fast food restaurant and said to leave off the pickles and am not at all surprised when they magically appear.

Negligence? Maybe. But an IIED claim? And punitives? Seriously? I don’t know what kind of comparative negligence law West Virginia has, but isn’t it possible if not probable that a jury would think that Jeromy is close to or over that 50% + 1 mark? But again, this is America. Sue who you want. We aren’t responsible for anything we do. It’s always someone else’s fault.

It’s not this article that bothers me, nor does this lawsuit. What kills me is the final lines of Justin Anderson’s article: "In one notorious instance in 1992, Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old woman from Albuquerque, N.M., sued McDonald’s after she suffered third-degree burns from spilling a hot cup of coffee in her lap. A jury later awarded Liebeck $2.9 million." Perhaps, but this is severely deceptive. The American Association for Justice (formerly ATLA) summarizes my beef with this paragraph the best: "[Urban myths, such as the Liebeck McDonald’s coffee myth] clearly are part of a massive disinformation campaign designed to undermine Americans’ confidence in our legal system and to benefit powerful corporate interests at the expense of average people harmed by corporate wrongdoing and indifference."

A simple Google fact check should have led Anderson to rephrase his conclusion to avoid perpetuating the McDonald’s coffee burn myth. As pointed out by the Center for Justice and Democracy and Wikipedia, Ms. Liebeck never saw too much of this $2.9 million award. By (probably) most of Google’s 883,000+ accounts, she probably got less than half a million after fees. Now, I’m not sure how reliable either of these first sources are, but at least one law firm (O’Steen & Harrison) has a press release emphasizing how the award was reduced. So does the American Association for Justice and Overlawyered. Seems to me that the better way to end the article would be to avoid the last paragraph all together rather that spin what I can only assume is Anderson’s (perhaps overly anxious) suggestion that Jackson is en route to big bucks.

Maybe I’m being too harsh. And granted, I haven’t read any other of Anderson’s articles, so I don’t know if this particular incident is isolated or part of a regular agenda. In the end, that’s not my point. I see it simply as a confirmation of the notion that the media’s biases (or simple laziness) continue to drift away from the objective center line. It’s no wonder people are so misinformed about the legal profession, or life in general. Is it too much to ask that news articles be written or reported in such a way to report the news and not direct it?

Tags: jeromy jackson lawsuit, mcdonalds cheese lawsuit, justin anderson, mcdonalds coffee lawsuit