Why suing mcdonalds could be a good thing

However, Judge Sweet's opinion suggests that they are unlikely ultimately to prevail. The judge ruled that, to survive another motion to dismiss, the girls must allege and be prepared to prove that McDonald's has successfully fooled its customers into a state of ignorance about the health risks of eating its product and that in the absence of McDonald's deception, they would not have become overweight.

From the moment that the case was filed, it struck most people as the punchline of a joke. Question: "What do you do if you become obese from eating too much fast food?

Who could be more undeserving of compensation than McDonald's customers who "supersize" their meals? Both the girls' lawsuit, and the similar suit brought by plaintiff Caesar Barber -- which was modeled quite deliberately on the tobacco litigation -- have faced significant legal and public relations hurdles from the start.

Nonetheless, it may be beneficial for a suit to have been brought to try to force McDonald's to pay for the harm that it knowingly inflicts in the name of profits.

A lawsuit, in other words, is not solely about compensating deserving plaintiffs. It is also about making companies internalize the costs of business, when those costs would otherwise fall primarily on others. As now-Judge Guido Calabresi pointed out years ago, a business or, for that matter, an individual that imposes costs upon others, but not upon itself, is likely to pursue activities that are not cost-justified.

To put it a different way, if my conduct hurts you but makes me rich, then even if the harm to you is much greater than the benefit to me, I may nonetheless consider my conduct worthwhile. Costly though they are, my actions' costs may not bother me as much if I don't have to bear them, particularly if I am a corporation whose primary or perhaps even sole objective is profit. Consider an example.

Suppose I drive an enormous SUV that pollutes the air more than other vehicles do. Though I too breathe the air, most of the excess pollution that my car generates will be inhaled by others. On the plus side, my larger car may give me prestige and allow me to transport all of the things that I might want to have throughout the week, rather than having to feel stressed each morning as I determine what I will need to pack into the car for the day. A big car may also make it easier for me to avoid being cut off on the highway and to cut off others if I am in a big hurry.

The bulk of benefits associated with my giant car apparently accrue to me, while the bulk of costs accrue to others. Accordingly, my inclination -- in the absence of altruism -- will be to purchase the big car, rather than a smaller one that might have greater fuel efficiency.

Why not? The negative effects of my choice are experienced externally, by others rather than by me. For me to make a decision that properly weighs all costs and benefits, a higher tax on gas might be a necessary step. Such a tax, which would make me pay more for using extra fuel and dirtying the air to a greater extent, would "internalize" some of the costs I cause -- meaning that I would have to bear them.

Internalizing costs gives someone like me an incentive to keep costs down -- for instance, it may motivate me not to choose an SUV.

Perhaps that's true, you might be thinking, but what does it have to do with McDonald's? Unlike the purchaser of a gas guzzling vehicle who hurts all who must breathe the dirty air, the consumer who buys and eats her meals at McDonald's hurts only herself: She is the one who becomes obese and develops heart disease or diabetes. If I eat Big Macs and the other delights that McDonald's has to offer every day and become morbidly obese and sick, it would seem that I have my own gluttony -- and not some other actors' selfish disregard for my interests -- to blame.

Both the benefits pleasure and the costs weight gain and bad health should register on my internal balance sheet. This position sounds persuasive. However, as anyone who has tried to diet but failed repeatedly, knows, immediate benefits often feel a lot more beneficial than more substantial, delayed costs feel costly. This intuition, moreover, is borne out empirically. As George Ainslie demonstrates in his book, "Breakdown of Will," human beings and animals both engage in a process called "hyperbolic discounting," which systematically undermines the proper internalization of future costs.

This problem is only aggravated in the case of youths such as the Pelman plaintiffs, one of whom is only fourteen years old. How can plaintiffs be made to face those future costs realistically? Taxes might work. Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter to get the latest restaurant news delivered straight to your inbox. In September , McDonald's was sued by dozens of black former franchise owners claiming the company discriminated against them on the basis of race by deliberately placing them in "substandard locations" that hindered profits and growth.

In November, civil rights attorney, Daryl Parks you might recognize his name because he represented the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown , joined the law firm leading the legal battle and is expected to play an important role in the lawsuit going forward.

McDonald's is currently fighting the allegations, claiming it would never do such a thing because it has a vested interest in ensuring the success of all of its franchisees. However, this is far from the only racial discrimination lawsuit the burger slinger is facing. Three black employees from a Lakeland, Fla. And a similar lawsuit has been brought forth by employees from Rock Island, Ill.

When McDonald's announced it was entering the plant-based burger game with its own take on the increasingly ubiquitous meatless burger , the question on everyone's mind was: Who on earth is the chain's meatless burger supplier?

McDonald's seemed to fuel the debate with ambiguous statements, including one it made in a Nov. Still weirder, McDonald's happens to be well — known for not making its own foods. Adding to the drama is the fact that Beyond Meat maker of Beyond Burgers , could have sworn it had just spent significant time and money co-creating the new McPlant patties. When Eat This, Not That! And round and round we go. Learn how a plant-based diet can protect you from disease. It's a tale worthy of a case study in an entry-level economics textbook: The popularity of the McFlurry is exceeded only by its unavailability.

For reasons and excuses McDonald's customers couldn't actually care less about, McFlurry machines are notoriously finicky, and a good bit of the time, they don't work at all.

In , McDonald's announced a major rollout of brand new machines that promised to be more reliable, but the status of that rollout remains unclear. In October , a group of franchisees got fed up waiting and formed a crack team to come up with a solution. Later that month, Eat This, Not That! McDonald's has not adopted it, but some franchisees are employing it with some success. She then goes…. The definition of providence; it seems like it accurately describes the nature of my specific career.

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