Overlawyered » soft drinks

October 28 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:10:57 +0000

Alleged wife murderer “sues J.P. Morgan for cutting off his home equity line of credit.” Reason cited: “imprisonment”. [Joe Weisenthal, Business Insider via Fountain]
Charles Krauthammer on the need to “reform our insane malpractice system. … I used to be a doctor, I know how much is wasted on defensive medicine.” [Der Spiegel interview]
Popehat looks back on turning two, in customarily entertaining fashion [unsigned collective post]
Sigh: “Chamber of Commerce Sues ‘Yes Men’ for Fake News Conference” [ABA Journal]
Coverage mandates explain a lot about why health insurance is so much costlier in some states than others [Coyote] More: Tyler Cowen (autism treatment)
Watch out for those default judgments: PepsiCo hit with $1.26 billion award in Wisconsin state court, says word of suit never got to responsible officials within the company [National Law Journal]
Ohio appeals court: characterizing incident as “Baby Mama Drama” is not prosecutorial misconduct [The Briefcase]
Ideological tests for educators? On efforts to screen out would-be teachers not seen as committed enough to “social justice” [K.C. Johnson, Minding the Campus]

Tags: banks, defensive medicine, insurance, mortgages, Ohio, on other blogs, prosecution, schools, soft drinks, Wisconsin

October 28 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

CSPI: “Vitamin Water” not good for you

Walter Olson — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:13:33 +0000

Mike Cernovich thinks the plaintiff suing over the sugar-laden beverage might have spared himself a lot of trouble by, you know, reading the label.

Tags: CSPI, labels, soft drinks

CSPI: “Vitamin Water” not good for you is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Update: Diet Coke sweetener class actions

Walter Olson — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 04:22:15 +0000

We’ve been critical of would-be class action lawsuits claiming that Coca-Coca violates consumers’ rights by sweetening its fountain version of Diet Coke with a mixture of aspartame and saccharin, rather than aspartame alone as in the supermarket version. Now the Missouri Supreme Court has rejected class-action status for such a lawsuit, reversing a lower court; it “said the classification was overly broad, because it could have covered an indefinite number of people, many of whom did not really care how their Diet Coke was sweetened.” (AP/Kansas City Star, Apr. 15).

Tags: class actions, Missouri, soft drinks

Update: Diet Coke sweetener class actions is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Vitamin drink said to cause priapism

Walter Olson — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 04:02:00 +0000

A New York man has sued Novartis, maker of the health drink Boost Plus, saying he woke up the morning after drinking the concoction with a case of priapism — involuntary male sexual arousal — that landed him in the hospital. “The company would not comment, but its website “describes the drink as ‘a great tasting, high calorie, nutritionally complete oral supplement for people who require extra energy and protein in a limited volume,’ in vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.” Reader Michael McK. suggests that word of the lawsuit may serve to increase the drink’s sales. (“Man Sues Over Long-Lasting Erection”, AP/Breitbart, Jun. 5).

Tags: hospitals, soft drinks

Vitamin drink said to cause priapism is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Coke Zero “lawsuit”

Ted Frank — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:27:58 +0000

For a viral marketing campaign, Coca-Cola pranked its own in-house counsel by sending improvisational actors portraying brand-manager employees to attorneys asking if they could sue Coke Zero for tasting so much like Coca-Cola; the results are on a series of videos on YouTube. So far none of the victim lawyers have sued. (Janet Conley, “Frivolous litigation: How Coke ‘punk’d’ its lawyers”, Daily Report, Mar. 23 (via BLT)).

Perhaps related: Mar. 6.

Tags: Coca-Cola, soft drinks

Coke Zero “lawsuit” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Is caffeine addictive? A review of the literature”

Walter Olson — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 04:05:50 +0000

AEI’s incomparable Sally Satel prescribes a soothing decaf for some of the public-health agitators who are beginning to rattle their cups about Starbucks and Big Cola enslaving our children and the like. (American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, Dec. 6). See Aug. 18-20, 2000, Jun. 1, 2004, Dec. 5, 2005, May 29, 2006.

Tags: food safety, soft drinks

“Is caffeine addictive? A review of the literature” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“This focus of evil in the modern world”

Walter Olson — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 10:31:03 +0000

If the Forces of Disapproval ever tire of beating up on Wal-Mart, they’ll need a new business to blame for the world’s not being everything it ought. George Will thinks Coca-Cola might fill the bill (“Liberalism as Condescension”, syndicated/RealClearPolitics, Sept. 14).

Tags: Coca-Cola, soft drinks, Wal-Mart

“This focus of evil in the modern world” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

De-villainizing Dr Pepper

Walter Olson — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 04:50:07 +0000

Commentary on soda-tax proposals that’s equally applicable to the obesity litigation wars:

…soda, by itself, isn’t making us fat. According to numbers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, regular soda consumption has been falling every year since 1998, but at the same time obesity has skyrocketed. In 2004, we actually drank less soda per person than in 1995, long before obesity was making headlines.

(Sara Cseresnyes and Andrew Chamberlain, “Soda Tax the Wrong Way to Help Curb Obesity”, Denver Post, Jul. 21, reprinted at Tax Foundation site) (via Radley Balko, who adds, “Yep. In fact, the beverage that has by far seen the largest increase in consumption since about 1980 is bottled water. Diet soda is second.”) Related: Lorraine Heller, “The Obesity Blame Game”, Beverage Daily, Aug. 7, and reader feedback at that publication.

Tags: obesity, soft drinks

De-villainizing Dr Pepper is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Court: Coke should have warned of fizziness

Walter Olson — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 13:39:40 +0000

Details at Point of Law.

Tags: soft drinks

Court: Coke should have warned of fizziness is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Soda suits: Banzhaf browbeats school officials

Walter Olson — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 04:26:57 +0000

More skirmishing in preparation for the expected lawsuit against soft-drink vendors over sales in Massachusetts schools (see Dec. 5, Dec. 7, Feb. 7, etc.), via a Boston Globe editorial (“Vending against obesity”, Jan. 30):

In advance of the suit, Washington lawyer John Banzhaf sent an e-mail to 50-100 school committee members in Massachusetts ”to warn of your inevitable involvement in these law suits as a named party or otherwise…”

A couple of years back, Banzhaf threatened to sue the Seattle school district for renewing a $400,000 vending-machine contract with Coca-Cola (Jul. 3, 2003). Prof. Banzhaf’s other doings, which have ensured him regular appearances on this site, include proposing lawsuits against parents of obese children and against doctors who fail to warn their obese patients about overeating (Dec. 3, 2004).

Tags: Coca-Cola, Massachusetts, schools, Seattle, soft drinks

Soda suits: Banzhaf browbeats school officials is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system