Are you a nutritionist? No? Then you should probably consult with one before you file a lawsuit like this one. You’ll save yourself quite a bit of embarrassment, and may even save yourself from becoming this week’s laughingstock of the legal blogosphere (no guarantee, though; they’re a fickle bunch).
An attorney in
How did he reach this conclusion? By looking at the
restaurant’s published nutritional
information. At first glance, one might reach the same conclusion as this
lawyer: a regular sandwich contains 49 grams of protein. A Super-Stacked
sandwich contains 71 grams. Shouldn’t a sandwich with twice as much meat have
twice as much protein? It seems reasonable at first glance – most of us know
that meat is high in protein, and most people (non-vegetarians, at least) get
most of their protein from meat.
It also seemed reasonable to this attorney, because he’s now alleging that Blimpie engaged in deceptive business practices and claims that each plaintiff might be entitled to $75,000 in damages.
There’s just one problem: meat isn’t the only thing in the world that has protein in it. In fact, it’s not even the only thing on that sandwich that has protein in it.
As this blogger accurately points out, the bread and cheese on the sandwich are also fairly high in protein. He even does the math for us: the 2 slices of American cheese that both sandwiches come with contain a total of 10 grams of protein. The bread contains 15 grams.
Subtract that, and we have 24 grams of protein from meat on the regular sandwich, and 49 on the Super-Stacked. Granted, I went to law school to avoid doing math, but I can tell you that 49 is almost exactly twice as much as 24. Sorry, Mr. Plaintiff’s Attorney, your lawsuit is over before it began.
I won’t question this attorney’s motives, because I honestly don’t know what they were.
However, I do know that lawyers don’t think like many other people. Lawyers are trained to spot problems, and then solve them. In preparing for exams, first year law students have the skill of “issue spotting” drilled into them – a large percentage of your grade on most law school exams comes from how many problems you spot, and propose a solution for. Whether or not you propose a good solution counts for far less. While being trained to spot problems is certainly a good thing, lawyers are generally not trained to gauge how important a particular problem is, in the scheme of things. Now, this is certainly a skill that most people (and by extension, most lawyers) possess, but you can bet they didn’t learn it in law school. This results in some lawyers seeing every tiny issue in the world as a legal question begging to be answered.
Some lawyers can’t leave this manner of thinking back in law school, where it belongs. It’s rarely useful in the real world.
This lawyer could have figured out he had no case by doing something that literally any other person who suspected of being shortchanged on meat would do (assuming they cared enough to investigate): buy a regular and “double” sandwich, take the meat out, and weigh it, and then see if the double-sized sandwich actually has twice as much meat, by weight. Problem solved.
Repeat after me, kids: Think before you sue.
By: Rusty Shackleford
