A bit of a pickle

Sorry, no tort reform here

IN 2002 Caesar Barber, an obese man, sued McDonald’s and other fast-food firms for making him fat. Their crime, Mr Barber argued, was to withhold nutritional information from their customers. “They never explained to me what I was eating,” he said at the time.

Mr Barber’s case was dismissed. But in response 26 American states adopted “Commonsense Consumption Acts”, commonly known as “cheeseburger bills”, to protect fast-food firms from such lawsuits. By making it clear that the weak-willed could not blame fast-food companies for their girth, the argument went, businesses would not just be protected from frivolous lawsuits. Such laws would also spur people to take more responsibility for what they ate.

A new paper, from two economists at Vanderbilt University, looks at the impact of the new laws.* Since different states adopted cheeseburger bills at different times, disentangling their impact from other factors (such as changing tastes or other regulations) is straightforward.

Using data from 2000 to 2012, the authors find that cheeseburger bills did...Continue reading

Source :Business and finance http://ift.tt/1FbdGt2