How seriously should this be taken? Man suing White Castle for small booths.

I have no idea about that case. I was just regurgitating what the professor (graduate magna cum laude Stanford Law School) told us in one of the law classes. Seems like he'd disagree with you.

 

I don't know what place it was. He made a statement without telling the names of any of the parties. Besides, I used it as a general statement about America, if you read it again.

 

It sounds like he's completely uneducated on the details of the case, how it unfolded, what the allegations are, etc. Considering that one of my best friends in my work life was involved in it from start to finish and has bored me to tears with it countless times, I feel very confident in saying that your source leaves something to be desired, regardless of his educational background. Here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants

As you can see, this is a product liability suit about the lid. McDonald's mishandled the thing throughout. See how the actual facts match up with your preconceived notion.

I've argued time and again that any lawsuit brought by an attorney is by definition not frivolous. This White Castle suit is not frivolous, especially when there was extensive prior communication with the plantiff.

 

...And this is why I'm jaded.

/Thanks, Jazz

 

Nope. Wrong. It's impossible to win a frivolous lawsuit by the very definition of what consititutes a frivolous lawsuit - one that's a complete waste of the court's time. And there aren't a ton of those, which are exclusively brought by individuals not represented by counsel who are trying to get money out of a corporation.

Now, if you're going to talk about fraudulent lawsuits, that's something altogether different. There are a decent amount of those - although probably less than most folks expect - but most settle before there's an actual suit brought.

 

Again, I agree with you, if the cases are ridiculous.

However, when it comes to the White Castle case, it is not ridiculous as people tried to make it out to be. For two years White Castle sent him letters, acknowledging the need, making promises and sending plans to him. When I said he deserved the compensation, it was not meant for him to win the case on that basis. The basis is their acknowledgment of the need for bigger seating. Even if the Disability Act argument doesn't pass, a company cannot make promises for a service to be carried out without doing so, even when there was no financial exchange that took place as the basis for the promise.

Their biggest mistake was to acknowledge and promise in writing. In my mind, it constitutes a binding agreement, no matter how one-sided it is.

 

People who cite the Mcdonald's law suit usually have no idea about the facts of the case:

700 reports of people being scalded by their coffee. Already $500,000 in pay outs. The coffee would scald people in two to seven seconds. Basically, McDonald's had a known problem but did not rectify it. This is not a legal system run amok.

I've also laid out the policy reasons for NOT including obesity as a disability. Although the ADA does state that it defines 'disability' as broad as possible, the weight of policy runs against imposing the costs of self-destructive behavior upon society at large.

Finally...there's no Magna Cum Laude in law school...
--- merged: Sep 13, 2011 3:50 PM ---

Yea...again...you're outclassed here.

It's called Consideration. A bargained for *MUTUAL* exchange. I can promise to send and do all sorts of things for you, but unless you give me some money, or other form of valid consideration, I'm under no obligation to perform.

There's a doctrine called detrimental reliance, where one party relies to their detriment on another party's promise. However, the relying party must have reasonably relied and have also suffered a detriment. Not present here.

So. In short. ONE SIDED PROMISES ARE UNENFORCEABLE.

 

Hm. Seems I was remembering wrong. I know the Law degree in the US is a Master's, as opposed to other countries. But, it has its own title, whatever that was.

EDIT: There we go. Juris Doctor...

 

I know practically nothing about law issues. Despite that I hope you can tolerate my ignorant opinions. I still think this case is silly, no matter how the American judicial system works.

I'm seeing this as a case, where the customer is not fooled in advance when purchasing the service. He can see, what they are offering, I don't see how this "promise" from company's side could force them to change things.

 

Agreed, I will have to concede defeat here.

I can only hope Jazz has something up his sleeve.

 

Oh, yes, I meant exactly what KirStang said, didn't notice his post above... I just don't know how to put it precisely...

 

But there is consideration. His continued patronage. It was contingent on their fixing the admitted problem. They've failed to fix it, and he's withdrawn his patronage. That his wife is patronizing the location on his behalf is a little troublesome, but since the problem is the dine-in experience, there's a problem. There's pretty clearly a contract here - offer and acceptance. And the detriment is the physical discomfort he feels in the booths. Pain and suffering can be a bitch, but remember (everyone but KirStang who knows this already) that law suits are just as much a bargaining tool as they are about punishment. Which is why so many of them get settled out of court.

If I were defense counsel, I'd want to make sure that this case never saw the inside of a courtroom. Any jury pool is going to be overweight since it will be made up of Americans.

 

Me too. I was wondering the same. Much respect for your maturity, Remixer.

 

Jazz--offer and acceptance for the food--not for the fixed booths. What you're saying is that White Castle made an Offer to fix the seats in exchange for the performance of continued patronage.

This is an objective test. Would a response to a customer complaint in the form of a pledge reasonably constitute an offer? I don't know Jazz, but to me, that's just customer service. I don't think an objective person would believe that White Castle intended to bind itself to the renovations in exchange for ONE customer's continued patronage.

Assuming that the offer did not exist, then we move to the equitable remedy of detrimental reliance. Detrimental reliance requires (1) promise (2) foreseeability of reliance (3) reliance in fact and (4) detriment. It's an equitable argument so there's a lot of room for play. Obviously, we have the promise here--WC's pledge to improve the seats. Then we can foresee that plaintiff would believe WC would correct the seats. Then Plaintiff walks in to restaurant and sees seats aren't fixed. He relied in fact. The problem with *DETRIMENT* here is that *Under an Equitable Remedy* (of which detrimental reliance is a subset of) only gives back the *damages that the plaintiff did in fact suffer.* Here, the inability to sit down. Thus he would only get nominal damages (probably hovering around $0).

Detrimental reliance usually operates to help people who've relied in good faith. For example, Contractors and Subcontractors. The typical case involves a Subcontractor submitting a bid, on which the Contractor relies in submitting their bid. After Contractor gets the contract, Subcontractor rescinds (there was never a perfect contract [offer-acceptance-consideration, no clear acceptance or consideration] b/w the Contractor and Subcontractor. Thus, Contractor can recover from Subcontractor the detriment--i.e. the difference between what the Contractor did pay and what the Contractor expected to pay to the Subcontractor. Courts will rarely go outside of awarding damages in fact in a successful detrimental reliance action.

 

Of course I'm saying that. They showed him the plans to fix the problem. They acknowledged that it was an issue and agreed to fix it. That he's not physically going to the store but continuing his patronage shows that he approached them in good faith.

Honestly, neither of us has enough detail to determine whether or not there was a contract. Neither linked article does a good job of spelling out the exact chain of events. Clearly at some point he communicated with someone at the corporate level about the difficulties with this particular location and they made plans to fix it; we don't know what was promised on either side. Honestly, if they said "the start date of the renovation is x/x/201x", then the whole thing is an intellectual argument.

Think back to basic contracts - a contract is offer and acceptance. Good customer service could be interpreted as a contract. I'm not convinced there wasn't at least a verbal agreement in place, although I'll conceed immediately that it may not be proveable with the information we have here.

But moving on to your assumption, remember that he's filing this under the ADA, so it becomes a class, not necessarily him individually. If, for instance, he were in a wheelchair and couldn't fit down the aisles or under the tables, that would be treated as a class as well. The detriment is that he's not able to fit in the booth and that he's not a person of unusual girth - as seen by his ability to fit into an airline seat (one of the few real facts we have). Now, notice what's absent from the article - a demand for money. It may be in the suit, but it may simply be asking them to uphold their agreement to renovate. Alternatively, they may try to post a sign saying "Yo, fatty, can't fit in our skinny jean booths? Ask for a fucking chair. Babbabooey!" (did I capture the New Yorkness there?) That would render the suit moot, for the most part.