Anyone wondering why West Virginia ranks at or below the bottom of all the "rate the state's legal system" surveys, and why it is perennially dubbed a "judicial hellhole," can look no further than this lawsuit reported over the weekend.
A man with a severe allergy to cheese orders a hamburger at the McDonald's drive-thru. He asks them to hold the cheese. He even tells the worker at the pay window and the worker at the pick-up window that cheese will make him sick. But as sure as night follows from day, the drive-thru order is wrong. The quarter pounder with cheese, hold the cheese, please, has cheese.
So, man opens the bag, looks under the bun, sees the order is wrong, goes back in and straightens it out, right?
Nope. Man doesn't look, bites into the hamburger, tastes the cheese, and starts to have an allergic reaction. Incurs $700 in medical bills, presumably from the emergency room. And sues McDonald's for $10 million.
That's right, ten million dollars.
The West Virginia legal journal, The Record, gets it exactly right, calling this McJackpot Justice:
"Mr. Jackson repeatedly asked as to the status of his food and whether it had no cheese," reads the lawsuit. "(He) took multiple preventive steps to assure his food did not contain cheese."
That's except the most obvious one, or actually looking at the burger he was about to eat before he put his life in danger by taking a bite.
Jackson, as lawyers like to say, was himself negligent. Even if you believe this story on its face -- and no doubt, many of you don't -- this drama was his fault. He put his own life in danger with his own general carelessness.
It shows an incredible disrespect for the concept of personal responsibility that he's now asking our courts to find otherwise, making Jackson and his attorney (of course) filthy rich in the process.
This case should be dismissed in short order. Our civil justice system exists to protect us from one another, not from ourselves.
Couldn't agree more.
