Posts Tagged ‘eat drink and be merry’

Poutine injuries in Canada

Canadian health officials require poutine—a Canadian dish of french fries, cheese curds, and gravy—to be heated to 140 to 165 degrees for health reasons, a temperature somewhat that below of hot coffee. Alas, this is a temperature that can cause second-degree burns if a consumer happens to suffer an epileptic fit and fall face-first into their poutine, as happened to an Ontario teenager dining alone at a local KFC. No lawsuit appears to be planned, though her father seems to be demanding warnings of some sort. (Don Peat, “Teen burned in KFC poutine mishap”, canoe.ca, Jan. 19 (h/t Bumper)). Of course, given that warnings cannot deter epileptic seizures, it’s not clear why this would have made a difference. And as the Mocking Words blog points out:

What if instead she ended up falling down and hitting her head on the concrete floor? Are you going to go around warning people that concrete is a very solid material and that people should be aware that if you fall and hit your head on the floor that it’s going to hurt and is possibly going to injure you?

New post category: “Eat, Drink and Be Merry”

It’s been a while since we’ve added any new topical categories, so we’ve just created one that’s been overdue: Eat Drink and Be Merry, covering lawsuits over bacon cheeseburgers and obesity, booze sales, foreign objects that turn up in the chili or bottled water, calorie-labeling goofs, and, of course, hot coffee spills. We might throw in a few related stories about claims of “addictive” entertainment, too. Several of these topics are obviously closely related to the themes of our ever-popular personal responsibility subpage, which will remain unchanged.

A word about our topical pages (which are a great way to use the site for research, or just browse what we’ve published on a topic you find of interest): our subpage on product liability is a catch-all for cases in that category that don’t fit into the more specific pages covering guns, tobacco, cars, aircraft, microchips, and so forth (and now food and drink). If you’re interested in product liability as a general subject, you should consider visiting these other pages too. And our subpage on environmental law ranges somewhat afield to take in topics that include zoning, landmark preservation, mold claims and (always a favorite) animal rights. The full list of topics can be found along the right column of Overlawyered’s front page, just below the list of archives arranged by month.