More: Bill Childs adds, “Oh, and the companies will pay California around $2.5 million.”

Regulating potato chip recipes is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

• Tell a judge to her face in open court that you consider her “a few French fries short of a Happy Meal” (William Smith of McDermott Will & Emery LLP, facing possible exclusion from the right to practice in the bankruptcy court in question; Crain’s Chicago Business);


• Show up in a hospital room to recruit as client a heavily medicated crash victim, then discourage him from going after the other driver’s personal assets in the case, without mentioning that the other driver is your own wife’s grandfather (Jeffrey Hark of Cherry Hill, N.J., referred for a state-bar ethical investigation although a legal-malpractice claim against him failed for lack of a showing of damages; NJLJ);


• As part of a $59 million settlement of Benlate fungicide-damage cases, accept a secret $6 million side payment from defendant duPont in exchange for (among other services) agreeing to file no more cases (Roland R. St. Louis Jr. and Francisco R. Rodriguez of Miami, disbarred and given a two-year suspension respectively; NLJ, Elefant).

Don’t is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

And more May 17 updates is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

But somehow, “the food industry” doesn’t sound quite as evil as “the tobacco industry.” Something about food — the fact that it keeps us alive, perhaps — makes its purveyors hard to hate. For that matter, the rationale for recent bans on smoking is the injustice of secondhand smoke, and there’s no such thing as secondhand obesity. …

These obstacles don’t make the assault on junk food futile. But they do clarify how it will unfold. It will rely on three arguments: First, we should protect kids. Second, fat people are burdening the rest of us. Third, junk food isn’t really food….

A fact sheet from [Iowa Sen. Tom] Harkin implies that schools should treat milk, French fries, and pizza like soda, jelly beans, and gum.

(William Saletan, “Junk-Food Jihad”, Slate, Apr. 15).

“Goodbye, war on smoking. Hello, war on fat” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

New Class Action Against McDonalds is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“The law of mythological food fears” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Supersized nanny state” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

AG Lockyer joins California french-fry suit is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Foodmakers say the use of trans fats is the only practicable way left to avoid the prospect of limp and off-flavored French fries and donuts, in part because earlier campaigns succeeded in demonizing butter, animal and tropical fats, though some of those fats are now considered less harmful than their replacements. Many nutritionists

had made their careers telling people to eat margarine instead of butter,” said Walter Willett, chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and one of a handful of medical researchers who have led the fight against trans fat. “When I was a physician in the 1980’s, that’s what I was telling people to do and unfortunately we were often sending them to their graves prematurely.”

That certainly inspires confidence in the idea of giving nutritionists access to the coercive machinery of government to enforce their recommendations, doesn’t it? (Kim Severson and Melanie Warner, “Fat Substitute Is Pushed Out of the Kitchen”, New York Times, Feb. 13).

McDonald’s settles trans fat claim is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Update: California french-fry suit is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system