Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

There’s a latex finger cot in my food

Every time a headline comes up along the lines of “Man sues eatery after claiming to find a condom in his soup” — and they come up fairly regularly — I am put in mind of the existence of “finger cots”, small objects made of latex or similar material and often worn by food handlers over individual fingers as an anti-contamination measure. If I were a journalist covering such a dispute, I’d want to ask both sides whether they had ruled out for sure the possibility that the object in dispute was a food handler’s finger cot. Wouldn’t you?

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4 Comments

  • This reminds me of the day years ago when I decided to stop advertising with 1-800-Lawyers. While I got many good cases, the amount of nonsense we had to wade through became too much. The straw that broke the camel’s back was a call from a fellow who said he wanted to sue Red Lobster (the restaurant chain). Why? Because the night before he “almost bit into a piece of glass.” There are a lot of folks out there who are looking for an easy pay day by suing a deep pocket and trumping up their damages (in the Red Lobster “case,” by making up damages). I don’t want to deal with them.

  • Finding a “finger cot” in your food doesn’t make it for headline material. Finding a “condom” on the other hand, practically guarentees that the story will be picked up by the media, thus resulting in unfavorable publicity for your target, which should practically guarentee a nice fat cash settlement.

  • We all know about the horrible things that go on in restaurant kitchens (just read Anthony Bourdain’s book ‘Kitchen Confidential.’). Cops are frequently the victims of having various viscous human secretetions added secretly to their food.

    So, if in fact you did find something as offensive, but not completely improbable, as a condom (apparently used as it had a knot tied in it), what would be the best way to deal with it? Leave it with the restaurant? Call the police and have them document everything and take the evidence into custody? Would they even do that?

    Taking it yourself seems to almost indemnify the restaurant from blame, especially if the employees keep their mouths shut.

    Just asking…

    • By zOlOft

  • Ok, somebody has to say it.
    Perhaps only a trial lawyer could confuse a finger cot for a condom.

    • By nevins