Funny warnings from Antenna Direct of Missouri [Consumerist] And Australian prawns (shrimp) are sold with a reassurance that the accompanying promotional material is “not implicitly or explicitly directed at minors, excluded persons, or vulnerable or disadvantaged groups.” [Hey, What Did I Miss? (Institute for Public Affairs)]
Posts Tagged ‘wacky warnings’
New warnings at McDonald’s
Bruce Nye has a photo of a pointless new warning McDonald’s has posted in California stores to avoid litigation. The warning seems to have a side safety benefit: by the time you finish reading it, your coffee won’t be hot any more.
January 16 roundup
- Caution: Warning label overload. Why wacky warnings matter. [Ted Frank @ Sphere]
- Further evidence of efficiency of product liability limits when federal safety regulation is already in place. [Philipson/Sun/Goldman NBER Working Paper No. 15603]
- Army seeks to court-martial soldier in Afghanistan for possessing “child pornography” when his mother sends him family photos that include a four-year-old in a swimsuit. [AP/WaPo via Riehl; WQAD]
- Burger King coffee is hot, too. [Virginian-Pilot]
- The “slush pile” disappears, in part because of fear of plagiarism litigation. [WSJ]
- Schwarzenegger faces fight on his proposed tort reforms. [Legal Newsline (I’m quoted)]
- I’m speaking at NYU Law January 21 at an American Constitution Society panel on class action issues. [NYU Law]
- Off topic, but I believe that this may be the first time I’ve been listed in the index of a book.
Disclaimer in a 1975 gun book
TortsProf’s Christopher Robinette notes the exceedingly cautious language employed by the publisher of a book on the Walther P-38 pistol. “It’s sad that the publisher can’t even ‘approve of,’ never mind ‘advise’ or ‘encourage,’ the ‘use of’ the material ‘in any manner.'”
Coffee cup warning
From Cleveland’s Erie Island Coffee Co., which now has a shop in the city’s East Fourth St. restaurant district. Courtesy @fourgreenis who records it at Twitpic.
On a bench, “Caution: Seats may become wet”
Britain’s Daily Mail has a pictorial feature on superfluous warning signs (via Free-Range Kids). Another peril to watch out for: “uneven surfaces” on beach sand.
Safety instructions in L.A. hotel elevator
They might make you uneasy in new ways [Lowering the Bar, scroll]
May 18 roundup
- Historic preservation and habitat preservation laws can backfire in similar ways [Dubner, Freakonomics]
- Serious points about wacky warnings [Bob Dorigo Jones, Detroit News]
- Texas solons consider lengthening statute of limitations to save Yearning for Zion prosecutions [The Common Room]
- A call for law bloggers to unite against content-swiping site [Scott Greenfield]
- Drawbacks of CFC-free pulmonary inhalers leave asthma sufferers gasping [McArdle, Atlantic]
- Try, try again: yet another academic proposal for charging gunmakers with costs of crime [Eggen/Culhane, SSRN, via Robinette/TortsProf] More/correction: not a new paper, just new to SSRN; see comments.
- California businesses paid $17 million last year in bounty-hunting suits under Prop 65 [Cal Biz Lit]
- Trial lawyer lobby AAJ puts out all-points bulletin to members: send us your horror stories so we can parade ’em in the media! [ShopFloor]
Towable toilet “not for use on moving vehicles”
Yes, it’s Bob Dorigo Jones’ annual Wacky Warning Label contest. Aside from the year’s winner, mentioned in the headline, other top entries included “Do not use if you cannot see clearly to read the information in the information booklet” (on a wart-removal product), “Always use this product with adult supervision” on a cereal bowl, and a bag of livestock castration rings cautioning, “For animal use only.” [AP/Times & Transcript (New Brunswick, Canada); Foundation for Fair Civil Justice] (more on wacky warnings)
Do not put any person in this washer
Fox News contributes original reporting on some of the familiar Wacky Warning Labels made famous by Bob Dorigo Jones of Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch in an annual contest and book. It helps track down information, for example, regarding the origin of the warnings not to use a hair dryer while sleeping, not to heat up a cellphone in the microwave oven, not to use a curling iron in the shower, and not to swallow a fishing hook (the latter seems to have more to do with the potential toxicity of the lead in the hook than the hook aspect itself). The warning against the temptation to obtain the light necessary to check a fuel tank by flicking on a cigarette lighter recalls the Burma-Shave jingle of decades ago:
He lit a match/
To check gas tank/
That’s why/
They call him/
Skinless Frank.
Also noted in the article: a warning against using “birthday candles as earplugs ‘or for any other function that involves insertion into a body cavity'”.