Discussion on answer by Adonalsium: Can I sue a restaurant for serving me meat in vegetarian dish?

Feeds

02:55

41

A: Can I sue a restaurant for serving me meat in vegetarian dish?

The goal of civil proceedings is to make the injured party whole. Your damages amount to the cost of the meal that you ordered. You have no other demonstrable, concrete damages. If you were, for example, so deeply emotionally scarred by eating the food Chipotle offered that you developed an eati...

ttbek

Suppose I make 80$ an hour and due to this mental trauma I now check through all my food myself at every restaurant I eat at before taking a bite. Suppose it takes 3 minutes to check thoroughly and I eat out twice a day. This goes on for the remaining 30 years of my life. That's arguably ~$87600 in damages right there without even getting near therapy level issues. This is a reality for many vegans and vegetarians due to this kind of negligence. Some places are even worse, they will intentionally tell you an item is vegan that isn't in order to up-sell it to you.

Obviously I'm not making an airtight legal case or the like, but restaurants need to understand that for a lot of people serving the wrong thing can be seriously disgusting. Omnivores don't need to live in constant fear of being served up roaches in their steak (at least food safety inspectors try to prevent it and there are serious consequences). Of course I understand that mistakes do happen, e.g. ordered a spicy paneer whopper not long ago and was accidentally served a regular spicy whopper. I didn't notice they misheard and it was on the receipt as a normal spicy whopper, so I let that go.

Clay07g

@ttbek Those 3 minutes are your free time. No one cares if you spend it picking at your food. Second, if every wrong order could potentially lose a restaurant hundreds or thousands of dollars in legal fees, you would probably never see a restaurant again. Let me make this very clear: your disgust has no legal or monetary value. If you don't like the way a company handles your food, don't give them money.

NotMe

@ttbek: an argument could easily be made that if you have a restrictive diet that it falls on you to check your food prior to eating it anyway.

Martin Bonner

I doubt the $87,600 is going to fly - but "emotional distress" is a thing that civil courts attempt to compensate for - so the damages could easily amount to more than just the cost of the meal.

Harper

@MartinBonner that occurs in cases where justice calls for that.

T.E.D.

02:55

@ttbek - I'm kind of with you, but having served on a jury for an actual "pain and suffering" lawsuit in Oklahoma, from that experience I'd suggest finding a different argument in this state at least. My jury at least had no sympathy whatsoever to what looked to them like an attempt to cash in off of a simple accident.

Martin Bonner

@Harper Justice calls for it when there is emotional distress (and it is not de minimis). I get the feeling that you, and a lot of other commenters here, have no sympathy for the emotional distress of the OP. As the partner and father of vegetarians, I am sure it was very genuine.

Adonalsium

I'm vegan. I absolutely feel for OP, I know that a lot of people feel very strongly about adding to animal suffering, even indirectly. Unfortunately, the courts very rarely find it appropriate to reward money in return for emotional damages. If you've spent money to feel whole again, such as via therapy, that's one thing. if you just feel upset about something, then that's hard to justify ordering restitution, especially over a simple mistake.

Harper

@Adonalsium But for those people, volition is everything. If you do everything right and meat ends up in your food unexpectedly due to others' error, they not you added to animal suffering, your hands are clean. Put it another way, if the chicken's mother sued you for wrongful death, and you chose to put up a robust defense, what would that defense be?

Adonalsium

Why, I'd say "I didn't know that chicken was in there, and I certainly wouldn't have paid to have it put there.", of course. But, we've digressed from legal discussions and into discussing the emotional impact of someone elses' actions. It's not about whose responsible for OP eating that chicken, it's about OP feeling bad about eating it. They can be upset, even traumatized, by eating chicken, even if rationally it had nothing to do with them.

Mehrdad

@ttbek: Omnivores would worry about roaches, too, if they were also served at that restaurant from a tray literally right beside the rice. Use your common sense a little. Not every comparison makes sense.

LateralTerminal

02:55

@ttbek. "Omnivores don't need to live in constant fear of being served up roaches in their steak." Incorrect. The FDA allows a certain amount of insects to be sold in food because accidents are inevitable.

Doktor J

If a vegan/vegetarian "feel[s] very strongly about adding to animal suffering, even indirectly", then that person should not patronize a restaurant that serves meat at all, as they are contributing (even in a miniscule way) to that restaurant's continued financial success, which ultimately facilitates them procuring and selling more meat.

2

reirab

@ttbek Regulations about roaches are due to the possibility of actual health damages from diseases spread by them, not merely someone's disgust. If someone were to sue over finding a part of a roach that accidentally made it into their food, but which had been thoroughly sterilized by the cooking process, I'd expect them to also be awarded nothing more than the cost of their food.

TBear

@Clay07g I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the value of a person's moral creed. I'm not a vegetarian (IANAV), but I understand that there is a significant difference in valuation between being disgusted by meat and being morally opposed to it.

Clay07g

@BlackThorn That's a fair consideration, but you're mistaken. Non-physical damage has value, and I believe that's what you're referring to. This can be caused due to things like religious discrimination and such. This is not the case here. "Moral values" and "Feelings" exist solely within the person. The non-physical damage that you incur from being morally opposed to something accidental is self-inflicted, by nature. The only way this would change is if the accused party was INTENTIONALLY trying to non-physically hurt them (IE: Tricking, threatening, intimidating, discriminating, etc)

Kat

@ttbek I've been served food with live flies swimming in it. Another place served me food with a used band aid in it, and I didn't notice until I'd eaten half of the food. Everyone is at risk of having gross stuff end up in their food. If you eat out enough, it will happen sooner or later.

TBear

02:55

@Clay07g you may be right, but I suspect you aren't. Let's say a video game was released that was modeled after real world drones hunting down terrorists in the middle east and somehow (magic) it ended up accidentally controlling actual drones. I suspect the consumers that found out they were accidentally co-opted into controlling real drones killing real people would have a case against the video game (ignoring military wondering who was controlling their drones). The people's disgust would be irrelevant because they chose the content, but the moral damages would surely be > $0.

Clay07g

@BlackThorn I literally said that things change if the accused party is intentionally attempting to cause non-physical damage (such as your example). I tried to make it as clear as possible but apparently English isn't a good medium of communication for us. And by the way, the video game player could sue even if they didn't care about the deceased. The fact that they were tricked and lied to in order to perform such actions is enough to make a claim. Feelings don't matter whatsoever except if it causes emotional/mental damage (medically measured).

JAB

14:38

@TBear Reminds me of Ender's Game.

BlackThorn

15:20

@Clay07g wow, what an unpleasant reaction. If you actually read my earlier comment, you'll see that I said "accidentally controlling, " meaning that neither the video game nor the consumer intended for it to happen. Use some imagination. The damage to the consumer was unintentional and non-physical. I don't know where you got the notion that damages have to be physical or medically measurable.

Mark

15:52

@BlackThorn If you could sue for that... I mean...
then why shouldn't the video game company be able to sue you right back?
After all, they didn't know you would magically use their game to use actual drones.
You realize what that's done to them morally speaking?
You completely destroyed them....
Sure, it's not your fault, it was an accident that you had no way of knowing about, but if that doesn't stop you from having a case against them, why would that stop them from having a case against you?

Clay07g

@BlackThorn Actually, if a magical being was responsible for the mix-up and cross-wiring, then neither party would be held accountable. This conversation is absurd.

BlackThorn

17:16

@Clay07g you are making a strawman of the details here, and are surprisingly unwilling to have reasonable discourse. There was no magical being, just an accidental (and perhaps impossible) bug in their code. They are responsible, but entirely on accident.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a demonstration of how accidentally co-opting someone into breaching deeply important moral issues (killing, eating meat, whatever) could be a basis for legal action. Please focus on the argument instead of unrelated details if you are going to respond anymore.

Clay07g

17:47

@BlackThorn It's against my strong moral code to look at the word "bug". Sorry, I know you didn't mean to tag me and trick me into reading it. I better consult my lawyer.

BlackThorn

18:59

@Clay07g I never promised not that say that word, nor do you have a reasonable expectation for me not to say it. I have a reasonable expectation that a company that promises vegetarian food has no meat in it. Next

Transcript for

Discussion on answer by Adonalsium: C…