Consumers cannot expect boneless chicken wings to actually be free of bones, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled Thursday, rejecting claims by a restaurant patron who suffered serious medical complications from getting a bone stuck in his throat.
Michael Berkheimer was dining with his wife and friends at a wing joint in Hamilton, Ohio, and had ordered the usual — boneless wings with parmesan garlic sauce — when he felt a bite-size piece of meat go down the wrong way. Three days later, feverish and unable to keep food down, Berkeimer went to the emergency room, where a doctor discovered a long, thin bone that had torn his esophagus and caused an infection.
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In a 4-3 ruling, the Supreme Court said Thursday that “boneless wings” refers to a cooking style, and that Berkheimer should’ve been on guard against bones since it’s common knowledge that chickens have bones. The high court sided with lower courts that had dismissed Berkheimer’s suit.
So what then is the difference between the boneless chicken wing cooking style and normal chicken wing cooking style? If it starts with “take a piece of chicken meat without any bones”, then what stops this line of argument from saying that it doesn’t matter how well they follow the recipe and thus restaurants can serve whatever they want to meet any order and then just say “we were following the (name of food) cooking style, not promising that, and are just bad at following that style or made up our own version”?
On a related note, how are judges determined to be qualified to make any decision? Are they supposed to be fair and intelligent, or just do their best to judge things in a fair and intelligent style?
That said, there was a bit of a fluke involved to have the bone go down the wrong way and also him not even notice for a few days. IMO in a proper decision, the restaurant shouldn’t have been fully liable for this incident, though they should have had some liability for that bone. And then some of that liability might be passed on to whoever provided them with the “boneless” chicken meat.
I don’t think you can easily judge a judge. Once you get the job, which very few do as you have to go for an additional degree for two years after law school, you’d have to really fuck up to lose your job.
Only the government/state can impeach a judge by popular vote of the officials. But there is no clear legal ground for this, it can only happen when they feel like it, or when there is evidence for criminal activity, bribery, which any serious individual can get away with pretty easily, or for a grossly immoral decision and a public outrage for that. That’s why it’s so rare.