Only Subpar Talks is brave enough to transition from sandwich talk to ancient sex toys to food lawsuits. That’s right. We wet our feet with a little discussion of sandwiches, discuss a 2000-year-old dildo, and then look at some really interesting lawsuits involving food. Among other things, listen and learn about the McDonald’s coffee case, why Papa John’s can say their ingredients are better, why you might want to shy away from Skittles, and why you might want to sniff your drink at Crackle Barrel before you take a sip.
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Only Subpar Talks is brave enough to transition from sandwich talk to ancient sex toys to food lawsuits. That’s right. We wet our feet with a little discussion of sandwiches, discuss a 2000-year-old dildo, and then look at some really interesting lawsuits involving food. Among other things, listen and learn about the McDonald’s coffee case, why Papa John’s can say their ingredients are better, why you might want to shy away from Skittles, and why you might want to sniff your drink at Crackle Barrel before you take a sip.
1. Topics
2. Additional Resources
3. Merchandise/Support the Show
4. Contact Us/Follow Us/Rate/Subscribe
New episodes every week!
Listen, rate, follow, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts!
Follow us:
5. Credits
This week, watch out for splinters, and people getting angry over food. Welcome to Subpar Talks. Hey everybody. Welcome to Subpar Talks, where we have conversations about everything. I'm Jeff.
Chris:And I'm Chris.
Jeff:Thank you again for joining us. And as always, before we get started, here is our standard disclaimer, listener discretion advised. We will curse from time to time, perhaps frequently, and we tend to touch on some mature subject matter, and we inject our humor into all of this stuff. So if that is not your thing, then maybe this podcast is not your thing. But for everybody else, get ready, because here we go with this week's topics. So you told me you just had a sandwich.
Chris:Yeah.
Jeff:Is that a late lunch or is it an early dinner?
Chris:It's a late lunch. I will definitely do dinner.
Jeff:OK.
Chris:No, that was way too early for dinner to be satisfying, cuz that's not gonna work.
Jeff:Force feed yourself at 4:30.
Chris:So, I ate a late breakfast, so that led to a late lunch.
Jeff:Do you find sandwiches depressing? Is that like a last resort thing for you or you look forward to'em?
Chris:I find it easy. It depends on what it is.
Jeff:Yeah, true.
Chris:So, like today, and this is your favorite, it was a peanut butter and jelly.
Jeff:Oh, gross.
Chris:But see I did that because it was easy. And, when I make a sandwich, so here's the problem personally... is like a meat sandwich. That means I have to have gone to the store to have meat that hasn't gone bad.
Jeff:Yeah.
Chris:And that's annoying.
Jeff:Yeah, it is. I'm, I'm laughing, I'm thinking of the Seinfeld where Kramer I think it's the first one, but he pulls two pieces of bread out of each pocket in his robe and says, you got any meat That's right. Well, and then there was the, then there was the butter shave. Oh yeah. And what was it, did Jerry do it? He put the bread on Kramer's face. Yeah. And then Kramer ate it. yep. Yeah, I was just wondering. Yeah, a sandwich can, it can be good, but sometimes it's like a last resort. Oh, I guess I'll have a sandwich. But if you do it upright, it can be good. So what would be for lunch? What would be the alternative to a sandwich? Well, I mean, if you got any kind of frozen meal, like some kind of, I don't know, do they still call'em TV dinners? I don't even know if that's a phrase anymore, but something like that. Like it's some kind of, that's interesting.
Chris:I always think of that as a dinner
Jeff:thing. Well, maybe I do too. And I tell you what, I hate eating too much for lunch and then I'm not hungry for dinner. I hate not being hungry for dinner. Yeah. Like when seven o'clock rolls around and I'm not hungry. I hate that.
Chris:Yeah. But you know, a lot of other cultures are very different than us. They will eat a big lunch and a small dinner, which is actually
Jeff:probably more healthy. I've heard that's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to decrease the amount you eat throughout the day. I'm the complete opposite I know we are. Well, and look at the country I know it. But
Chris:yeah, we, we consume the most at night and then go to bed
Jeff:on it. Yeah. That can't be good. No. Did you hear about the 2000 year old dildo? Oh, I saw
Chris:something about that. Oh yeah, I did too.
Jeff:Yeah. Sounds like I'm about to tell a joke. It's not a joke. It's a real thing. So
Chris:the very first thing I thought about when I saw that was splinters. Like it
Jeff:was wooden. Yeah. Several people were commenting about that. Like, holy hell, that could go really wrong. So for those of you not in the loop, back in the early nineties in the northern part of England, archeologists found this thing. It's phallic shape, cylindrical. And they initially assessed it as a darning tool, which is knitting something or other. I have no idea. Anyway, recently some archeologists reexamined it and they've determined that it is most likely a dildo. And this is from like first century Roman time, so it's a 2000 year old dildo. But I found that funny and some people were shocked, like, oh my God, I can't believe that. But holy hell, people have been putting stuff in themselves as long as they've been able to
Chris:Yeah. What, like, that's just a modern
Jeff:invention, right? Yeah. And I gotta say this, like the whole, uh, well if you look at, at art from back then, like I remember when we went to Pompei in, in Italy, and there's a lot of stuff that's preserved from when Mountain Vesuvius erupted and holy hell there art, like there are dicks everywhere. They were obsessed with dicks. So it's no surprise really. Yeah. So anyway, I was gonna say the whole uh, so-called sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies, I was led to believe that people were like doing all this stuff that nobody had done before. All these orgies and free love and all that and no, and that stuff's been going on since the beginning of time. What made the sixties different was people were not afraid to like talk about it openly. Yeah. They talked the thing. Yeah. They weren't ashamed of. I'm not ashamed of my body.
Chris:Well, and they were doing all the drugs at the same time, which Right. Maybe the, the maximum of the sex stuff and the maximum of the drugs was a little bit different. Maybe that's what put it in the forefront too. I don't know. But yeah, maybe
Jeff:none of that stuff was new. I guess this is true of all drugs, but ecstasy was legal at one point. Oh yeah. Yeah. And psychologists, psychiatrists, I guess it would be, would prescribe it to, uh, a lot of times to couples and couples counseling because it would free'em up and you'd have'em open up and express their love for each other and all that. And then they figured out that it's not the best thing for your brain.
Chris:Is that where it got its name? Or was it already called that?
Jeff:I have no idea. That's a good question. But I know Dallas was a hotspot. Like it, that's where it started. Like when they made it illegal, it was a big thing in Dallas clubs and all that. Cause I've read about that cuz the cops would come in and bust these dance clubs where it was getting passed around this like the late seventies. OK.
Chris:I was gonna ask if it was like the eighties, so seventies, eighties. Yeah. Yeah. That must have been good times. I mean, in some ways I bet it have been.
Jeff:Oh, no doubt. Kind of fun. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Then AIDS came along and ruined everything. I was gonna say, it must have been great when all you had to worry about was like herpes and Yeah. Just go get chlamydia, go get an antibiotic. Right. I mean, That stuff's not gonna kill you. Well, syphilis can kill you, right? Yeah, syphilis can. OK. There might be
Chris:one or two others that could, in extreme circumstances. I think the rest would just be like, bad news.
Jeff:Yeah, unpleasant
Chris:Like, oh damn it
Jeff:reminds me of in the office, Todd Packer, there's an episode where he says, I got a little, I got a couple of love bumps on my, I don't remember what he said for his dick, but So gross.
Chris:Love bumps. That is nasty. nasty.
Jeff:I know it. All right. So yeah, the 2000 year old dildo, people have been putting stuff in'em for as long as there have been people and they'll continue to do it well, like George
Chris:said, cuz it's there
Jeff:right? Yeah. You know, I mean, wouldn't, that would've been the cheapest thing. I guess they could have had, I don't know what they, they had iron right back then. I don't know. How about stone? Out stone? There you go. Smooth that thing down and yeah, go to town.
Chris:Seriously. Wood. Oh
Jeff:my gosh. Yeah. I read the, uh, an article where they, they were, um, referencing this and the archeologist who was quoted said wood over time is susceptible to shrinkage. So it was probably bigger than it is now. It's like six inches long. I don't remember how much around. Yeah. But it was pretty big around. Yeah, at the base it was huge. Yes. I mean, I guarantee you somebody tried to reverse it. that.
Chris:I bet.
Jeff:All right. So at the end of every episode, I implore people to give us suggestions for topics that we can discuss in future episodes. And David, an avid listener of the show, did just that and he alerted us to a website. And this website, I don't wanna get it wrong, I've never gone here, but it is the takeout.com. They've got an article titled 18 of the Most Interesting Food Lawsuits of All Time. So I figured that was a real, uh, a really good topic to discuss. Thank you, David, for bringing this to our attention. So I'm gonna roll through these and love a good lawsuit
Chris:as long as
Jeff:I'm not a participant in it. Right. Exactly. Yes. Oh, I forgot an update to my jury duty. They didn't need me. I didn't even have to go. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was kind, you wanted to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so when I saw this or when I, um, was alerted to this interesting food lawsuits, I thought it was gonna be like a bunch of food poisoning stuff. Mm-hmm. and that's not really what it is. But I wanted to ask you, have you ever gotten food poisoning from a restaurant? Like, you know for sure you had it? I've not ever
Chris:known for sure where it came from, but I've suspected it a good couple of
Jeff:times. Yeah. That's the way I am. There have been two occasions where I was. Really messed up and the symptoms are too vile to discuss behind the microphone But I never, I never for sure knew where it came from, but mm-hmm. Yeah, I was pretty sure I had it. Yeah. And that was, that was rough. Oh, it's never good. No, it's not. OK. So these are in no particular order. The first one they have listed is the McDonald's hot coffee case. You of course know about this, right? Yep. Yeah. Everybody, everybody in our age range knows about this. It was a massive deal. This was in the late eighties, I wanna say early nineties, and it made the rounds, it was everywhere, but I don't think as many people know about it now, cuz I've had. I've had students bring it up in class before and there were like, half the class had no idea what this person was talking about. So I don't know that it's as widespread now. What do you remember hearing about it back then? Well,
Chris:so the lady got this cup of coffee. I think sh did, I think she, she's an elderly lady. I think she put it between her legs, I guess she was driving, put it between her legs. It spilled, scalded her. She got like second and third degree burns. Mm-hmm. um, sued them over it being too hot. And one of the things I remember hearing, and I don't know a lot of details around this, but part of the reason that the jury had said they awarded her so much money, whatever that was, was because they felt like McDonald's was very like cold and heartless about it. And basically only defending their position. And their position was they had. Cooled it down at times, but saying that customers had requested it be that hot and so they were supposedly giving customers what they wanted.
Jeff:Right? Yeah. I rem i, I, uh, put this farther back than it is, uh, or is it further back, whatever. It's 1994 and yeah. Stella Lebeck, 79 year old woman sustained third degree burns when her McDonald's coffee spilled in her lap during a drive-through visit. By the way, before I forget this, there's a really, really good documentary called Hot Coffee. You should check that out. Our listeners should check it out. Yeah, so it's about, well, this is the central focus of it, this case, but it presents the larger picture of how we're largely getting fucked over by corporations through various things that they do, and this is a prime example of it. But yeah, you're right. So she wasn't actually driving. She was in the passenger seat and then she put it between her legs to put uh, like cream and sugar in it. Mm-hmm. and spilled and yeah, she had third degree burns. She had to have skin grafts and all that. Her recovery took two years. She Wow. Requested$20,000 from McDonald's just to pay for the medical bills. Not anything about pain and suffering or any of that. And McDonald's responded, uh, that they would give her$800, 800 bucks. Whoa. Yeah. And so then she's like, well, that's not gonna cut it. And, you know, they filed a lawsuit,
Chris:even 20,000 sounds low if she was having to have skin grafts and stuff. I agree. That's gotta be more expensive
Jeff:than that. Yeah. Even for back then it sounds low. So the jury awarded her$200,000 in compensatory damages and then 2.7 million in punitive damages because it turns out McDonald's had had over 700 other customers complain that their coffee was too hot.
Chris:Whoa, I didn't
Jeff:know that. Yeah, they had just ignored all of them and done nothing. And uh, once they awarded that McDonald's appealed the decision and then there was a settlement. We don't know exactly what the settlement was, but it is somewhere around$500,000. That is according to the American Museum of Tort Law. I have no idea where that is. I didn't even know there was a museum of, I didn't, there you go. What's in that, what's gonna
Chris:be in the museum?
Jeff:Maybe they have like the McDonald's cup. I have no idea. Yeah, I don't know. So
Chris:I hope she got her legal fees too, because soon, so McDonald's and getting 500,000, that might not have paid for enough.
Jeff:Yeah. In that documentary, they mentioned the temperature that it's served at and I, I think it's like a hundred and I might get it wrong, but I think it's like 170 degrees is what the coffee is served at. Yeah,
Chris:I think that's about right. And that's, that's
Jeff:crazy. It is. And I think after this lawsuit, uh, they lowered it like 10 degrees or something like that. So maybe it was like 180 and now it's 170. But in the documentary you see this, but. There's a McDonald's guy being deposed. So this is a deposition before the trial and, and Leach's attorney asks him something to the effect like, would you drink this right when it was served to you? And he just fully admitted, no, you better not drink it right when it's served to you, cuz it's gonna burn everything that it touches, including your esophagus and your stomach and everything else. Like, yep. Why are you serving the coffee so hot? You know, I've heard,
Chris:um, when they talk about the temperature to set your, your water heater in your house mm-hmm. is at 120 degrees, which is essentially like the recommended temperature. Mm-hmm. at 120 degrees. It takes, I can't remember it's 30 seconds, a minute, something like that before you start to get scalded, whatever the definition of scalded is. But as you go from one 20 to one 30 to one 40, that reduces to like half the time. And then a quarter of that time, like at 140, you can get scalded in a few seconds. It's like five to 10 seconds. So it greatly decreases the amount of time with a relatively small increase in the temperature. And that's only going up to like 140. So if you're talking 170, 180, you can just imagine it would be exactly like an immediate scalding as soon as it hits you and then knowing it's sitting on your clothes, so you can't immediately get it off. Yeah, this is gonna continue burning until it cools down.
Jeff:Right? That'd be horrible. It would be. OK. Next up. Do you know about Barilla? I don't know if I'm saying that right. Barilla Pasta, the spaghetti, the brand. I don't think so. You'd know it if you saw it. I think just, I mean it's, it's a common brand. But anyway, they have a slogan that says on their box of spaghetti, Italy's number one brand of pasta. The problem is, it's made in Ames, Iowa, Oh, they have another place in Avon, New York, wherever that is. But it's not made in Italy, but it started in Italy. But somebody claimed that that was misleading. And let's see. The most recent decision in the ongoing legal matter simply reflects the court's early conclusion that the lawsuit can proceed. So they have, they're able to move ahead with this lawsuit. So this is currently going on. Burr meat remains committed to vigorously defend against these unfounded claims as the wording on the box. Clearly states made in the USA with USA and imported ingredients. We're very proud of the brand's. Italian heritage, the company's Italian know-how and the quality of our pasta in the US and globally. So on our really See your problem with that then? Yeah, I don't think I do either.
Chris:So that reminds me of a little bit of the Papa John's and Pizza Hut lawsuit. That happened years ago. I don't remember how long ago it was. Um, but essentially Papa John's slogan was Better ingredients, better Pizza. Yes. And in their commercials, I can't remember if they called out Pizza Hut or just called out other. Pizza places. Pizza Hut was clearly one of their targets, whether they called them out or not. And they were talking about other places using canned ingredients and essentially like Subpar ingredients compared to what Papa John's uses. Right? Well, pizza Hut sued them saying, you can't say better ingredients, better pizza, because you're not, we use quality ingredients too, and you know you're making a false claim. Mm-hmm. And for a while, I can't remember if it was, uh, there was a temporary injunction, I think that was put against Papa John's, where they had to take it off of their boxes pending the lawsuit. Mm-hmm. And so their boxes were coming out either plain or they replaced it with something else, almost making reference to the issue going
Jeff:on.
Chris:Yeah. But they ended up winning. And I, uh, Papa John's won. I mean, I, I mm-hmm. I totally disagreed with that lawsuit too. Just kinda like this pasta thing is saying that something is better, better ingredients. Well, according to
Jeff:whom. OK. I mean, that's what I was gonna say. It's an opinion. It's clearly, it's an opinion and better
Chris:pizza according to whom you, somebody's gonna go to Papa John's and say, this is the best pizza I've ever had, and somebody else can go and say, it is absolutely the worst pizza I've ever had. Well, who's right? Nobody. Yeah. It's an opinion. So that's, that's really why they want, I think, is like, well, better is not making a factual claim. So
Jeff:you can say whatever you want. I don't know if this qualifies as free legal advice, but. That's a way to cover your ass in most cases of where you might be libeling somebody or slandering somebody is just preface it with, in my opinion, you know? Yeah. And then like you're not stating it as facts. You're just giving your point of view on something. So very true. Yeah. I remember hearing about that. I forgot about it. I remember hearing about it. And then the Papa John's ultimately won. Give me Pizza Hut over Papa John's. Really? Yeah. See? You
Chris:don't agree. Well, OK. I, to be fair, I don't think I've had Pizza Hut in an eternity. I like Papa John's. I like Papa John's a lot, but I actually, yeah, I couldn't even make a fair comparison now between the two, because it's been forever, since I've had
Jeff:Pizza Hut. All right. Next up, Canada Dry Ginger Ale. When's the last time you had that? Been a little while. The same time you had Pizza Hut
Chris:No, I've had it a little more recently. You know what's really good is Jameson and Ginger Ale.
Jeff:OK. I was gonna ask, do you just drink it by itself? No, no, no, no.
Chris:It's gotta have something in
Jeff:it. I have, I I've had it by itself before and when I, whenever that happens, I always wonder why do people drink this by itself? Like, it's not anything to write home about. For sure. I have had it
Chris:by itself, but that's, that's more like, um, settle your stomach or something. Not like, Ooh, I
Jeff:want to drink this. Yeah. That's along these lines. So there's a guy in Canada, Victor Cardoso and his family had been drinking Canada dry ginger ale for the health benefits of the ginger, but they didn't taste any ginger, so he sued. And when I read that, I thought, hmm, I don't know that it really tastes like ginger either. I, I can't really describe what the taste is, but I don't think it's ginger. Mm-hmm. like that's more of a root beer type flavor. Right. Ginger, ginger root. Isn't that what root beer is, is it? Oh, I'm way, way off. I don't
Chris:know if that's in root beer or not, but Ginger I think of, um, like, well, there's ginger beer and then you can get ginger dressing. You know, things
Jeff:like that. Yeah. I don't know. I thought that's what the root beer is. I don't know. I could be wrong. Anyway, he's sued cuz he couldn't taste any ginger in it, according to their attorney. He said quote, they do buy actual ginger, but then what they do is they boil it in ethanol and they essentially destroy any nutritional or medicinal benefits. He said one drop of ginger fills 70 cans Whoa. Yeah, that's really, really diluted. If that's true. I would say after 20 months of legal wrangling, the lawsuit was settled for$200,000, but Canada Dry stated it expressly denies liability and is not required to change its product labeling or advertising for products marketed in Canada. I don't know how that compares to what they have to market it here in the us but anyway, evidently not a lot of ginger and ginger a. I never really
Chris:thought about that. So something that's fascinating to me with, with any of these stories and not, not like the McDonald's thing. I mean, that's, that's a, an actual injury. But, you know, talking about this one, uh, just as an example is what kind of person is it that's at home? Having a drink of something and goes, I don't taste such and such, or at least not as much as I think I would, I'm gonna sue
Jeff:them. I know, I've wondered that too. An
Chris:individual. Yeah. I mean, if it's a company that's really got something to protect and that goes to, I think the Pizza Hut thing was weak, but at least it was a company against a company trying to protect their image. Mm-hmm. but an individual person going after a company. For something like that. That's, that's just fascinating to me that someone would take that
Jeff:on themselves. It seems like a lot of these people, I don't know if this is the case, but they're old, retired, don't have enough thing, they don't have enough to do. I don't know what it is. Like I, if I can't taste, if I don't like something or I can't taste what I thought I was going to in a product, my first inclination is not, Hey, let's sue the company. It's that, well, I'm not gonna buy that again. Exactly. Like, who the fuck cares? And
Chris:I see some, some very weak claims on stuff, and I figure there's somebody that, that will go after them. And by somebody, I mean, uh, federal Trade Commission, somebody Yeah, yeah. That's, that's interested in consumer protection as a whole. Mm-hmm. and saying, oh, you as a company can't make these false claims about your product, not me as an individual that says, yeah. I'm willing to get tied up in a lawsuit for X number of years over something like that. I
Jeff:don't think so. Yeah. This next one is a little more serious. It involves Cracker Barrel. Do you like the Cracker Barrel? I
Chris:like it. It's not a place I, I've been to frequently. I've been several times, just a long
Jeff:time though. I like Cracker Barrel. I don't like the thought of Cracker Barrel The people you, which you likely to encounter at Cracker Barrel. Oh, well some of that can be the
Chris:locations of the
Jeff:Cracker Barrel That is true. Yeah, that's true. The first Cracker Barrel I ever ate at was in Alabama. Uh, well, there you go. That was an experience. But yeah, you're right. They've done, uh, there was a study done in 2016. of counties where there was a Cracker Barrel and then counties where there was a Whole Foods mm-hmm. And there is a very, very strong correlation between how those counties voted for President Trump versus Hillary Clinton. And really, I don't have to tell you which way it went, but that was interesting to see. Yeah, I was gonna say,
Chris:there's probably not a whole lot of overlap in the counties that
Jeff:have both no OK. So there's a guy at at Cracker Barrel named William Kronen, and he had ordered water and they set a clear liquid down in front of him, which he of course assumed was the water that he ordered. It had ice in it. But he took a sip of it and immediately began to feel a burning sensation in his mouth and his throat. Well, that's not good. Come to find out, he had been served a chemical called eco sand, which was being used to clean the kitchen at the time. Oh, no.
Chris:With ice too.
Jeff:That was thoughtful. Yeah. So it makes me think somebody did it on purpose, like why are you gonna put that in a glass? Right.
Chris:I don't know. But then what? What are they thinking beyond that? I'm gonna set this in front of this person and then what?
Jeff:Well, I'm thinking somebody filled it up and then the waiter or waitress, I'm sure all this came out in the lawsuit, but did the waiter or waitress actually, were they the ones to fill it? Like are they the ones who usually fill the glasses with whatever, or is that somebody else? I don't know. It makes me think it was done on purpose. Cause I don't see how that could happen just by accident. Yeah. So what happened to him? Let's see. OK, this is from the article. The legal process overall is a long one considering the original incident happened eight years ago. But interestingly, it took the jury only 40 minutes to deliberate and deliberate its verdict. The jury awarded compensatory damages of 4.3 million. Whoa. And then came back 10 minutes later and gave them another, fuck you, they awarded 5 million in punitive damages. Damn. So total of 9.3 million. Wow. That's high
Chris:compensatory though. Yeah, they're they're still gonna do that
Jeff:in punitive. Yeah. So that's con, the compensatory is medical bills, pain and suffering essentially, but then the punitive damages on top of that. Wow. Let's see. A media relations person for Cracker Barrel emailed CNN and stated, while we have great respect for the legal process, we are obviously disappointed and strongly disagree with the jury's award in this case, which involved an unfortunate and isolated incident that occurred at one of our stores eight years ago. Damn. Wow. Alright. Maybe they need to keep that stuff locked up. Yeah, no joke. Do you know about the, I think it's called Fire Festival. It was supposed to be a big music festival and it did. It never happened. OK. I watched the
Chris:uh, there was a documentary on
Jeff:Netflix about it. Yeah. I watched, I don't know if I finished it. I watched a lot of it. Anyway, so this is kind of like that, but it's a food festival, so Chicago Food Fest lovers. We're let down in 2018 after purchasing tickets to a series of fraudulent festivals, including a non-existent Bacon Fest, crab Fest, and a Taco Fest. So Bacon Fest I know, it's, I'm interested. Sign me up for the Bacon Fest. Uh, the Illinois Attorney General sued the festival promoter, Kristin Yvette Martin, for essentially orchestrating the fire festival, but for food. So there you go, She promoted the fictional events on Facebook, sold tickets. She scanned customers out of 30 thou, more than$30,000 according to the lawsuit. And yeah, there you go. So
Chris:was it intentional or did the whole thing just
Jeff:fall through, it sounds like. Well, OK. There were a couple of things I'm reading on here that she had bought permits for, but that was it. Like nothing happened beyond that. So I don't know. But the bottom line is it was no, I mean, these people did not get what they paid for. Yeah.
Chris:It's amazing to me, and I'm trying to, I, I can't remember enough of the details around the Fyre Festival as to how much of that was neg, I guess negligence versus fraud. Yeah. Or, or good combination of both. But I'm just amazed at how many people, uh, aside from these situations, are OK with truly defrauding people. I know. Yeah. Like you know that you are taking their money for nothing and you know that in the beginning and that's it.
Jeff:And, and what do they think is gonna happen? I know. Well,
Chris:exactly that. I don't know that, that there's not gonna be enough proof that they can make it look like they tried to do something or, or do they just take off with the money? I don't know. But it, it's just amazing. But, and in both, in both ways. One, from a conscience standpoint, like how could you do that? But then Yeah. What do you think's gonna happen? I mean, if you're completely OK with it from a conscious stand conscience standpoint is Yeah. Where do you think this is headed now that you're really gonna get away with it? Um, it's unbelievable.
Jeff:It is. OK. Speaking of frozen dinners, if you saw something on the cover of a frozen dinner that said like, ready in five minutes? Mm-hmm. What does that mean to you? I'm gonna cook it
Chris:and it's ready to eat
Jeff:in five minutes. OK. Do you count the five minutes as the time that it takes to unpack it and whatever else you gotta do before you pop it in the microwave? Or would you think, OK, I gotta cook it for five minutes in the microwave and then it's ready? I
Chris:would think I'm gonna cook it. I, I wouldn't count. Yeah. The un unboxing,
Jeff:this might be the dumbest lawsuit on here. It involves Velveeta on paxon, velvetas, shells, and cheese. The cook time is prominently displayed ready in three and a half minutes. According to s a today, one woman found that claim to be false and is currently suing Craft Hines Food Company, the makers of Aveda for 5 million. Oh my gosh. This lawsuit's gonna get thrown out. Hopefully. That's insane. Yeah, it is. The suit really comes down to the nitty gritty details, and it's probably a good lesson in why packaging tends to provide seemingly too much information. Consumers seeing ready in three and a half minutes will believe it represents the total amount of time it takes to prepare the product, meaning from the moment it is unopened to the moment it is ready for consumption. The lawsuit reads three and a half minutes is just the length of time to complete one of several steps. This woman's an idiot. Yeah. And her attorney's an idiot too. Well, yeah,
Chris:exactly, because who's gonna think different different people can open at different rates. And how far is it from where you open the package to get over to your microwave? There's all kinds of variables in there. Yeah. It's gotta be the
Jeff:cook time. I know. It's just absurd. All right, next up. Do you like In and Out Burger?
Chris:It's OK to me. It's highly overrated. I don't
Jeff:understand it. Yeah, I agree. I remember people raving about it and hearing about lines, you know, like a mile long when one first opens and all that. And I had it and I was like, eh. I mean, yeah. I wouldn't say it's really better than any other fast food place.
Chris:No. Somebody says they want to go, I'll go, but I don't pick it. I don't understand.
Jeff:Right. OK. In and Out Burger, they're the ones here who filed the lawsuit. They have filed a lawsuit against a Michigan burger place called Dollen Burger, that's D O L L n, apostrophe burgers for infringing on the signature look of the restaurant in and out. Seem to mostly take issue with the use of white, red, and yellow in the design. Citing things like the white cups with red graphics as proof of some kind of intellectual theft. This sounds just as ridiculous almost as the Vedo lawsuit. It does. So I will, I'll post a picture of Dollen Burgers and the in and out logo next to each other in the episode notes, but I looked at it and I, it seems absurd to me. So what if they're the same colors? Right? You can't
Chris:trademark or copyright the colors.
Jeff:Right. Who's gonna confuse it anyway? I mean, one clearly says in and out. It'd be different if they called themselves out in n Berger, right? Then you might have a claim according to the lawsuit. Tell me how they arrived at this number. According to the lawsuit, there is a 49.3% chance people would confuse Dollen burgers within In and out based on its design and use of the N in its name. No. Uh, uh, there's a greater percent chance of that, that, that this lawsuit is frivolous. OK, this one is kind of convoluted. I'm gonna run through it really fast and I'd never heard of this, but McDonald Land Mayor cheese's domain and setting of McDonald's major marketing efforts well into the 1990s was the epicenter of a year's long David and Goliath legal battle nearly 50 years ago. So this is back in the, uh, mid seventies. Late seventies is when this was finally all said and done. OK? So it started in 1970. There was an ad agency that had an opportunity to pitch a campaign to McDonald's. Before the pitch, the agency representatives approach, Sid and Marty Croft, you might have heard them. They did several like cartoon type stuff. This one involves HR puffing stuff, which I never watched, but it's like a puppet kids show. OK. Yeah. OK. So this ad agency is discussing a collaboration with them and this ad agency initially asked the CROs if the agency could use, could base the McDonald's campaign directly on the iconic puff and stuff, characters. And so they were negotiating this thing, but the talks fell apart. They never got approval to do. So. Fast forward in 1971, McDonald's aired the first of its McDonald Land commercials. It starred none other than Mayor Mc cheese, who wouldn't, you know, bore a striking resemblance to HR puffing stuff. So Mayor
Chris:MCee.
Jeff:Yeah. Sounds like they just ripped it off of that. And, uh, just put it in their commercials. Uh, there was a huge lawsuit in the end. The CROs scored a total award of one little over a million dollars,$1,044,000 from McDonald's. That's nothing, yeah, from McDonald's? No, not at all. All right. This one is interesting. Back in the mid nineties, Pepsi launched a campaign called Pepsi stuff. Do you remember this? No. OK. You could collect Pepsi points with every purchase of Pepsi products, and you could redeem those points for items in a Pepsi stuff catalog. OK. So you could get stuff like a t-shirt or whatever. All right. They ran this ad. And with all this Pepsi stuff, they're showing how many points it's gonna take to get this. So how many points for like a pair of sunglasses, a t-shirt, sweatshirt, whatever. Mm-hmm. And at the very end of the commercial, they show a jet, and at the bottom of the screen it says 7 million Pepsi points. OK. OK. So when I saw that, I thought, haha, that's funny. You know, it's a joke. But one guy didn't take it as a joke and he thought, all right, I'm gonna try to get the jet. So he's like, all right, I'm gonna collect 7 million Pepsi points. And then he realized that that's impossible to do. There's no possible way you could do that. How are you gonna do it? You're gonna have to, you know, drink. It'd be like when Kramer and Newman were trying to drink all the stuff out of the cans and bottles to get him to Michigan, right? So, Then he got the catalog, the Pepsi stuff catalog. And in the fine prints he noticed that it said in place of product labels. So in place of that, you could simply buy Pepsi points for 10 cents each. So instead of the jet costing 7 million Pepsi points, now it's gonna cost him a cool$700,000. So he was able to get that money together and he tried to buy a jet and Pepsi said it's a joke or whatever. So he sues and you should watch, this is a Netflix documentary, it's called Pepsi, where's My Jet? And it's, it's good. It's really interesting. That's awesome. Yeah.
Chris:And a$700,000 jet. That's quite a deal.
Jeff:no kidding. Um, I'm gonna give the spoiler now. So if anybody wants to go watch this, uh, without knowing the end result, then uh, tune out for about 10 seconds. But the judge, so here we go. Tune out. The judge ruled against the guy he ruled in favor of Pepsi because the judge said it was clearly a joke.
Chris:That is a little bit surprising though, because they could have put that in the fine print and it seems like Yeah. With all of the lawyers that would've been going over a deal like that, that they would've said, um, you do have a discrepancy here. You're saying 7 million points, which is impossible, but you're also giving people the option to buy points, which is not impossible.
Jeff:Yeah. and this is, uh, so I remember that from the nineties. I mean, I didn't know there was a lawsuit over it, but I remember seeing that in commercials. And then in law school, they talk about this in the documentary, how this is a a, this is an every single case book in law school now, because it gets to what is an offer, what qualifies as an offer, when somebody makes an offer for whatever. That's the first step for there to be a contract. And then somebody obviously has to accept it. So that was the issue here. Is it a valid offer? Mm-hmm. and then yeah, go from there. Interesting issue. Very interesting. OK, this next one, this might be as ridiculous as the Velveeta one, but in 2019 at the height of Chicken Sandwich Madness, this article says, A Tennessee man named Craig Barr filed a lawsuit against Popeye's in Hamilton County. Alleging false advertising and deceptive business practices. So he was upset that they advertised the chicken sandwich and then he tried to get the chicken sandwich and they didn't have, they didn't have it available. Mm-hmm. said he waited. He wasted countless time driving to and from Popeye's in pursuit of the elusive sandwich during which time his car's tire and rim were damaged. Well that's his fault. Jesus Christ Almighty. Wait, this is one trip He went there once and they were out. No, it sounds like he's going back and forth home to Popeye's. Home to Popeye's and, and they still don't have it. And then he fucked his car up. So he wants Popeye's to pay for that. He also notes, friends laughed at me, humiliated. He's suing for$5,000. Oh my God. He deserves to be laughed at and humiliated. Yeah,
Chris:that's like a small claims court
Jeff:thing too. Yeah. Imagine that lawsuit in front of Judge Judy. That's ridiculous. Yeah. Yep. OK, next up, McDonald's makes the list. Again, this involves also a rais canes. Have you ever had raising canes chicken? Oh yeah. I like them. I've had a like couple times. Yeah, it was OK. I didn't think it was great, but it was all right.
Chris:One of the best things they have going for them is their sauce. You had the sauce with the chicken or even the fries. That's good stuff.
Jeff:I don't remember if I had that or not. Well, then you didn't have the whole experience. I'm ill-informed. OK. Uh, raising Canes was set to open a new location at a shopping center in Hobart, Indiana with a binding contract quote in 2021, the company signed a 15 year lease with plans to open a double drive-through in patio seating. It wasn't until after the ink was dry on the deal that raising canes learned, there was a ban on selling chicken at that location. So the owners who had occupied a restaurant before that had signed a non-compete clause with McDonald's. McDonald's didn't want anybody selling chicken anywhere around them. They wanted to be the only chicken people, you know, uh, around that whole shopping center. And so this person, whoever it was, sold this lease or leased it out to raising canes and then raising canes, finds out about this non-compete clause. And so there's this huge lawsuit raising canes, McDonald's, the person who sold it and all that. And I think it's still going on. Yeah, it's still going on. That doesn't
Chris:seem like that could be legal, that McDonald's would do that. That's anti-competitive.
Jeff:I'm wondering that too, and that might be ultimately what the judge rules is that this was never valid in the first place. It does seem illegal to me. I mean, I wouldn't
Chris:want to be the raising canes opening up right
Jeff:next to McDonald's. No, but
Chris:that doesn't mean I shouldn't be
Jeff:able to. Right. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's probably illegal, but I have to hash it out on the other hand.
Chris:I think most, any actual chicken place has a whole lot go. Has a whole lot more going for their chicken than McDonald's
Jeff:has going for their, yeah, good point. No kidding. Is it even chicken, right?
Chris:It's parts chicken parts.
Jeff:Parts is parts. Yeah. Parts is parts. All right. You like Skittles? Yeah, I like
em.
Chris:It's
Jeff:not my favorite, but they're all right. Yeah, I do too. I feel the same way. Like I, yeah, it's good. I'll eat'em. OK. This involves a class action lawsuit against Skittles. So their company is Mars claiming they knowingly deceived customers. By not disclosing that Skittles contain titanium oxide, a substance that the suit calls quote, unfit for human consumption. The substance is used to create the bright colors of the rainbow. We all love. It's a taste. It turns out titanium oxide is banned in the uk. The European Food Safety Authority said in 2021 that it could not rule out gen toxicity or the ability of a substance to damage one's d n a. Holy shit. Whoa. And the, uh, international Agency for Research on Cancer has said titanium oxide is a potential, uh, potential carcinogenic, really. So yeah, maybe I'm rethinking now my decision to eat Skittles. Yeah, I
Chris:hadn't heard about any of that. Sounds like the, uh, red m and m thing way back
Jeff:when. Yeah. Yep. So I've heard this, I don't know exactly what all is on this list, but I have heard there's a lot of stuff that we eat over here that's, they're not allowed to sell in Europe. because it is carcinogenic, it causes other problems, whatever. Any kind of like, there's certain ingredients in, in food that we just have here. Mm-hmm. that they won't sell probably because they care more about people than we do here. There's that, and we
Chris:have more money here to pay off the people to allow it to continue.
Jeff:Very true. And
Chris:then we're one of the more unhealthy developed countries too. So put all that together.
Jeff:Do you like Subway? I used to like
Chris:Subway back when they were the major game in town, I guess. Mm-hmm. But there are too many better options now that I just
Jeff:never go there. Yeah. I feel exactly the same way. I have not sought a subway out in a really long time. Anytime I have it now, which is rare, it's just, oh, OK. Well that's, that's all we got right now or whatever. It's just kinda like Applebee's. There you go. It's the Applebee's of fast food places. Yeah, OK. An initial lawsuit filed in 2021 regarding subway's. Tuna alleged that what subway serves as tuna isn't actually tuna, but rather a mixture of various fish oh man. Subway vehemently denied these charges causing the New York Times journalist Julie Carmel to send away samples of the tuna to be tested. The lab sent Carmel and email that read no amplifiable tuna, d n a was present in the sample and so we obtained no amplification products from the D n a. Therefore, we cannot identify the species.
Chris:but it's tuna,
Jeff:but it's at least fish. Well, maybe allegedly. Allegedly. Definitely not tuna according to that finding. Whoa. This reporting caused Subway to create subway tuna facts.com. Holy hell. They created a whole website in response to this to share the reasoning behind calling subway tuna, real tuna by October, 2021, A judge throughout the initial lawsuit, but another one grew in its place, they claim that lab testing has shown that the tuna includes animal proteins such as pork, chicken, and cattle, which is a misrepresentation of the advertised 100% tuna. So that lawsuit is still going on. Wow. And honestly, would it surprise you if it wasn't tuna? I mean, to
Chris:an extent, yeah. If you're saying it's
Jeff:real tuna. Yeah, maybe not 100% that, I mean, it would surprise me if it was not tuna at all, but how much of it is tuna? It wouldn't surprise me if it's something less than a hundred percent.
Chris:I guess so. But that's like, you know, you can't say that something is beef unless it's 100% beef. Hmm, OK. You have to say meat something. Yeah. You can't call it beef if it's not pure cattle, I guess, right? Is the way to say it. So in that case, I would say, why would you be able to call something tuna? If it's not pure tuna? You could call it fish. Yeah, call it a fish sandwich. I mean, yeah, call it.
Jeff:Call it a fish sandwich. That grosses me out. Fish sandwich. Well
Chris:that's because it's fish. It's
Jeff:disgusting. That line cracks me up from that, from the laugh. We can't identify the species. Yeah. Some alien product in your sandwich. Right. OK. Subway makes another appearance here, uh, as the article states. If you've ever thought that there was something a bit off about subway's chicken while you are not alone. Back in 2017, a team of reporters for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program marketplace we're curious too. They sent samples of subway chicken along with chicken from a and w, McDonald's, Tim Horton's and Wendy's to a lab at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario to test how much of this chicken was actually chicken. They weren't expecting anything to come back as 100%. Things happened during processing and seasoning, but most of the tests came back showing between 88.5% and 89.4% chicken, d n a, except for subway. Subway's oven roasted chicken tested at as 53.6% chicken and its strips were 42.8% chicken. The rest was soy protein. Whoa. Yeah, so just fake shit. Yeah. So subways sued. They didn't like that. I don't know if they created a website in response to this, but they filed a 10, 210 million defamation suit claiming that the story was recklessly and maliciously published, and that the study itself lacked scientific rigor. When the suit went to court, the chain submitted its own scientific evidence that its chicken was less than 1% biller. So as far as I can tell, that lawsuit is still going on. Well, I think I'm not too big
Chris:on subway now in particular. Right. I did hear recently that they were going to start cutting their meat. At the counter instead of having it
Jeff:precut. Oh, OK. What's the point in that?
Chris:I don't know if that's a presentation thing or, or what, but appearing fresher. I mean, that certainly has that appearance. Yeah. If you're cutting it off the thing right then, as opposed to pulling it out of a a bin. But that still doesn't answer the question of what are you cutting it off of? like if it's a 49% block of soy protein and 51% chicken, you can still cut it in front of people. Right.
Jeff:That's gross. All right. When did you, when do you first remember? There's probably, probably not a defining moment here, but. When do you first remember roughly hearing the phrase Taco Tuesday? I feel like it's been pretty recent. I do too. As in
Chris:literally the last five, seven
Jeff:years maybe. Yeah. Yeah. I would say if
Chris:it's more than that, then I was completely out of the loop. Yes. Which is also a
Jeff:possibility. Same here. OK. As it stands today, Wyoming based Taco Johns. Have you ever eaten at a Taco Johns? Never heard of a Taco Johns. Yeah, I've heard of it. I've never eaten there. The fact that they're based in Wyoming, how good could it be? Well, and John for tacos? Yeah. Yeah. Taco Juan, maybe That's what I was gonna say while ago. With Papa Johns. I want my Italian places to have an Italian name slapped on'em. Yeah. Like it just makes me feel better. And I like my Mexican places. Yeah. Call it Taco one. Yeah. It's gonna be better than Taco Johns. All right. They're claiming that they, taco Johns trademarked the phrase, taco Tuesday. The brand highlights its ownership on its website. Ever hear of Taco Tuesday? We started it. We even trademarked it. That's how seriously we take tacos. They claim to have started Taco Tuesday, but multiple sources have found that the earliest use of the phrase came from Snow White Drive-in, which had it printed on in South Dakota's Rapid City Journal in 1973 and in 1975, taco Tuesday was also used by Marty's a restaurant in Manhattan, Kansas. Both documented use. Uses of the phrase occurred long before 1979 when Taco Johns claimed to have started it in 1989 when the brand obtained the trademark. So they are periodically filing lawsuits against different restaurants for saying Taco Tuesday. Well, all
Chris:of that is a whole lifetime ago compared to when I heard of it.
Jeff:Same
Chris:here. Yeah, because even if I'm off by a few years and saying five to seven, we're talking about 40 40 plus years
Jeff:difference right there. Right. OK. You like T G I, Fridays,
Chris:I like them, but I hardly ever go. One of the best things to me that they had going for them was their burgers. I did like
Jeff:their burgers. I've, I've been a few times. I honestly can't remember anything about it. So let me ask you this, you're a rational consumer. If you wanted a cocktail or any kind of drink and you're looking on the menu, but it doesn't have prices. Mm-hmm. what would you do? If it's a big enough deal, I would ask. There you go. OK. Yeah. So this guy in Pemberton, New Jersey, Robert Cameron, sued A T G I Friday's franchise for failing to list drink prices on its menu, which he says in 2012 caused him to order a$5 beer and a$3 soda that were more expensive than he expected. According awarded cost him to right? A court awarded his suit class action status. So there were other people upset at this, allowing other customers who feel they were similarly duped by the franchise to join. This is stupid. If something's on a menu and you don't see a price and you're concerned about what it's gonna cost, ask your friendly waiter or waitress and they will tell you, Jesus Christ. The class
Chris:action there would be if you ask how much it is, and then you get charged something different.
Jeff:Yeah. Then you've got a claim. Right.
Chris:If there's no price, then you don't have to order it or you ask and then make your decision.
Jeff:Unless there's some statute, and I doubt there is in New Jersey that says you have to list prices on a menu, then it seems like there's no claim here at all. No, that's, but again, just because somebody doesn't have a valid claim, that doesn't stop'em from filing a lawsuit. People can sue for anything, which scares the shit outta me. Yeah. Yeah, it does. I'm always afraid of being
Chris:sued. I say always. It's not like he keeps me up at night, but, but I mean, it's a concern that yes, somebody can sue you no matter what. It doesn't matter how frivolous it is, because then you're on the hook to defend. You
Jeff:have to defend, right? Yeah. You can't just roll over. No, not do anything about it. All right. There are, there were a couple of others on that list, but I'll post that in the episode notes and our listeners can take a look at that. But those are, I think the title of the article lived up to the to its name. Those are interesting lawsuits. Meritless, perhaps some of them anyway. Really is interesting though. Yeah. Now when I go back to the Cracker Barrel, I'm gonna think about that guy. I'm gonna smell my drink first.
Chris:Exactly.
Jeff:All right. If you like this kind of stuff, then we are your kind of people, and this is your type of podcast. So you should follow us on whatever platform you listen to podcasts on. That way you'll get new episodes delivered to you automatically every single Tuesday. You don't even have to do anything. And while you are there, go ahead and rate us. We would be really happy, happy if you'd give us five stars. And while you're there, go ahead and write something for a review. It doesn't even matter what you write, but the way these apps work, the, if you write something there that makes it easier for people to discover the show, so we would appreciate that as. We have a website that is Subpar Talks dot com. If you want to learn more about me, Chris, whoever, whatever related to the show, then go there. You can also email us, leave us a voicemail. If you have suggestions for topics we should cover in future episodes, go ahead and do that just like David did, and we will always take those into consideration. We are on social media on Twitter. We are at Subpar Talks on Facebook. We are Subpar Talks. You can follow our personal Twitter accounts on there. I am at@independentjeff and I
Chris:am at Chris Bradford.
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Chris:think it's, uh, probably good that that didn't cross over into the restaurant stories
Jeff:All right, very good. That is another episode of Subpar Talks, and until next week, so long.