Sorry, Marbury and Madison, get out of the way. Miranda, you are warned. Brown and the Topeka Board of Education, sorry, but you can take Roe and Wade with you on your path to legal oblivion. More than 250 years of U.S. legal history is about to be thrown into turmoil because these formerly landmark cases pale by comparison to the transformational lawsuit that is now taking place in Illinois.
Anita Harris filed a class-action lawsuit (Definition: Companies pay a ransom, lawyers get rich, and plaintiffs get a hundred bucks) in the Southern District of Illinois that will shake the legal world to its very core. Ms. Harris, who has summoned the courage to attempt to undo years of carnage inflicted upon the American public, is fearlessly taking on Kellogg for... (you better be seated)... misrepresenting the amount of strawberry in strawberry Pop-Tarts. (If your compasses and GPS are a bit off lately, blame this lawsuit. It has probably changed the Earth's axial tilt.)
Earth before (Left) and after (Right) the Pop-Tart lawsuit was filed. Photo: Pixabay
It is hard to disagree with the premise of Ms. Harris' suit: 'Pop-Tarts “cannot provide a true strawberry taste” since it is overwhelmed by “significant amounts” of pears and apples, and says the red food coloring gives consumers “the false impression” that the pastries contain more strawberries.'
OMG, is this bad or what? How bad? Ms. Harris is seeking five million dollars from Kellogg's, because had she really known about the strawberry-deficient pastries, she would not have purchased them. Does she deserve it? Maybe so. Imagine the difference in health outcome if Ms. Harris had simply known what she was putting into her body.
Artist's rendition of Ms. Harris: (Left) After consuming strawberry Pop-Tarts with less than 2% strawberry filling. (Right) Had she consumed strawberry Pop-Tarts with 2.5% strawberry filling. Images: Flickr, Wikimedia. It is not clear how the composition of the Pop-Tarts would enable her to change race, but I'm looking into it.
Let's give Ms. Harris the benefit of the doubt and assume that she did suffer in some measurable way from Kellogg's deplorable falsehood. Does she really deserve $5 million because she would not have bought the strawberry-challenged pastries?
The answer is "yes," provided that certain criteria are met.
Walmart sells a package of them for $3.94, with 16 in a box. Doing some esoteric mathematical calculations I concluded that the cost of a single Pop-Tart is 24.6 cents. So, in order to fairly compensate Ms. Harris for the physical, psychological, and financial harm she suffered from those nasty apples and pears, she ought to be able to demonstrate that she bought (and presumably ate) 20,325,203 Pop-Tarts.
I can't find her age, so let's assume that Ms. Harris is 50, so she has been out of the womb for 18,250 days. This comes to:
- 406,504 Pop-Tarts consumed per year
- 1,114 per day
- 46 per hour
...every day of her life since birth. I suppose this is possible:
Even as an infant Ms. Harris had discerning taste. Photo: Pxfuel
You may now submit your favorite lawyer jokes in the comments section. Have fun!
Josh Bloom
Director of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Science
Dr. Josh Bloom, the Director of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Science, comes from the world of drug discovery, where he did research for more than 20 years. He holds a Ph.D. in chemistry.
