A small rip in the fabric of reality that will lead to humanity becoming untethered from all that has gone before.
Or something.
From the legal eagles at the Volokh Conspiracy, July 25:
"Boneless wings" aren't wings, so does that mean they don't have to be boneless either? The Ohio Supreme Court weighs in.
If a restaurant customer finds a bone in an order of "boneless wings" can they sue? What if the bone causes them an injury?
Today, in Berkheimer v. REKM L.L.C., the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed a lower court judgment concluding that a customer could not sue a restaurant for negligence over an injury allegedly sustained by a chicken bone found in an order of "boneless wings."
Here is how Justice Deters opens his opinion for the four-justice majority:
Michael Berkheimer sued a restaurant, its food supplier, and a chicken farm after he suffered serious medical problems resulting from getting a chicken bone lodged in his throat while he was eating a "boneless wing" served by the restaurant. The trial court determined that as a matter of law, the defendants were not negligent in serving or supplying the boneless wing, and the Twelfth District Court of Appeals affirmed that judgment.
Berkheimer contends that the court of appeals focused on the wrong question—whether the bone that injured him was natural to the boneless wing—in incorrectly determining that the restaurant did not breach a duty of care in serving him the boneless wing. Berkheimer maintains that the relevant question is whether he could have reasonably expected to find a bone in a boneless wing. And he argues that the resolution of that question should be left to a jury.
We conclude that the court of appeals got it right. In a negligence case involving an injurious substance in food, it is true—as Berkheimer argues—that whether there was a breach of a duty of care by a supplier of the food depends on whether the consumer could have reasonably expected the presence of the injurious substance in the food and thus could have guarded against it. But that consideration is informed by whether the injurious substance is foreign to or natural to the food. The court of appeals correctly applied this blended analysis in determining that there was no material question of fact about whether Berkheimer could have reasonably expected a bone to be in the boneless wing and thus could have guarded against it. We therefore affirm the judgment of the Twelfth District.
And from the part of the opinion discussing what one should expect from an order of "boneless wings":....
....MUCH MORE
