Lawsuits are needed to make fat people whole

Paul Carpenter

August 13, 2008

With wanton negligence, if not malice aforethought, the food industry has conspired to make Americans fat.

It was not enough that fast food joints sadistically schemed to hurt people by making coffee hot and then failed to protect them from spilling it on their laps.

No, the food industry also deliberately conspired to make stuff taste good so as to compel unsuspecting customers to eat too much.

While these cruel plots affect people all over America, it was shocking to learn on Tuesday that a disproportionate number of Lehigh Valley residents have been targeted for victimization.

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Statistics from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tuesday's story said, show that 28.7 percent of Valley eaters are obese, compared with 26.3 percent nationwide. That's an extra 2.4 percent of blubber for us and I think I might account for that four-tenths all by myself, through absolutely no fault of my own.

Just as lawyers protected idiots (and everyone else) from hot coffee, punished the tobacco industry (sort of) for mucking up our lungs against our will, and halted pernicious fun (thousands of swimming pool diving boards, etc.), we must look to them to protect us from tasty food.

Tuesday's story also said Lehigh Valley people are more likely to smoke and get drunk, but the most insidious part of the story involves people who seem to resemble the nudes of Rubens and Renoir.

Being fat is somebody's fault and, in Pennsylvania, the legal profession says it does not matter who is primarily to blame.

Under the ''joint and several'' concept, if you are 1 percent to blame they can make you pay 100 percent of a lawsuit jackpot, which makes it nice for lawyers who take 40 to 50 percent and don't want to get stuck with somebody who turns out to be broke. If your neighbor has a faulty sidewalk that causes an injury, and the neighbor has no money, J&S makes you pay all the damages -- for failing to put up warning signs.

Lawyers say that victims ''deserve to be made whole,'' no matter who did what, so I anticipate they will go to bat for us Lehigh Valley blubber victims as soon as they hear about the CDC statistics. Being made whole may not be the best way to put it, but our problem is no less deserving of ambulance-chasing zeal.

In my case, a contingency-fee lawsuit could target a Pennsylvania company, Hershey, which makes Reese's peanut butter cups with reckless disregard for what they do to me. At the interstate level, whenever I am on the Left Coast, I cannot resist In-N-Out Burger; I could eat double-doubles every day. Around here, many restaurants are trouble for me, but the lure of China Wok, east of Trexlertown, is indomitable.

What am I supposed to do? Eat one plateful of salmon, snow peas, rice and General Tso's chicken and then go home? It's ''all-you-can-eat,'' for Pete's sake.

I hate to admit it, but my worst problem is my wife, the world's greatest cook. She once had to go to California for two weeks, so she made a big batch of lasagna to be warmed up one piece at a time. She should have known me well enough to know I'd get a bellyache scarfing down the whole batch all at once.

And that's not all. She also makes terrific sushi, okazu, spaghetti and other things. (Sushi, by the way, is not raw fish; it's pickled rice. Raw fish is ''sashimi.'')

So there is plenty for Rick Orloski and other Lehigh Valley contingency-fee lawyers to do. Corpulence tort is begging for lawsuits, and maybe they'll result in settlements or awards in the billions of dollars, as we saw in the tobacco case.

In that case, of course, the victims have yet to receive a dime. All of the billions went to government bureaucrats and contingency-fee lawyers, and the deal they made protected tobacco companies from any reduction in actual profits.

Pennsylvania lawyers, however, are so generous I am sure they will be more willing to share a little.

One concern: Before they sue my wife et al for making me fat, they should wait until J&S is repealed. Wife et al are 99 percent to blame, so I do not want to wind up paying 100 percent of the award to myself.

paul.carpenter@mcall.com 610-820-6176

Paul Carpenter's commentary appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.