The great burger heist

So a group of eight New York children are suing McDonalds because “they did not know a burgers and chips diet would make them fat"! Now I can imagine these eight children reclining around the sitting room in front of the TV finishing off double fudge sundaes with brownies on the side and saying “Jeez! I’m starving here. I feel like a double Hunga-Busta McDonald's with triple french fries and a large cola “but how can we afford that on the pittance our parents give us for pocket money?!"

The other seven burp and slurp their agreement and put on aggrieved and litigious faces. “Why don’t we sue McDonalds?" they ask in unison, with no prompting whatever by out-of-work predatory purveyors of legal services. “We have a case," say the children, “They make all that cool food, we are forced to smell it as we pass by in our air-conditioned chauffeur-driven cars on the way home from school “and now we don’t have enough money to buy it. It’s outrageous and insulting."

"Better words in a class action court case are “contemptuous, scurrilous and slanderous” because they really work on juries," suggests one. “Worth a million in any self-respecting equitable court these days."

"OK" agrees another, “And I suggest a second case up our sleeves of barbarous, contemptuous and scurrilous neglect on the part of our parsimonious and niggardly parents who are content to sit by and watch their disadvantaged offspring wither away like this."

"Hey, that’s good," agree the rest. “All we need now is a compassionate and understanding lawyer."

They found a generous and sympathetic lawyer, who had nothing but their bona fide (a good Latin phrase always sounds good in these stories) developmental interests at heart, who agreed that McDonalds had “created a national epidemic of fat children and violated consumer fraud laws by failing to adequately disclose the health effects of its menu."

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Not to let an obvious bandwagon pass by unclimbed upon, the parents of these eight children hedged their bets by going for a win and a place on the first case to neutralise any possible losses on the second.

And one child in (ye gods!) a similar case, height 5ft 6ins and aged 15 and weighing in at 28 stone (a euphemistic way of saying nearly four hundred pounds) admitted that he “normally orders the Big Mac, fries, ice cream or shake “I like to super-size my orders." He now has diabetes and has eaten at McDonalds “nearly every day since he was six!"

His mother disclaims all culpability. She would never have allowed him to “gorge himself on Big Macs if she knew they contained high levels of fat and salt." Wasn’t she watching her child over these nine years?!

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And do you know something? They will probably win their case. These courts have not generally shown high scores on IQ, let alone self-esteem or common sense. The day will come (believe me) when taps will have to carry warning signs: “This implement discharges water which, if inhaled in copious quantities, may cause drowning."

And you and I, dear fellow Child and Youth Care workers, fly in the face of caution and actually live and work with children who have both parents and lawyers. Hope your legal insurance (which has to cost twice your salary) is paid up.

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Just to be safe: Any similarity between this feature and any real-live cases at present before the courts is purely ridiculous. No actual lawyers, children or families were used, dismembered or experimented upon, and no actual hamburgers, either McDonalds or generic, were eaten during the preparation of this article.