Fast Foods Friendly Memo:

Your senior partner has called you in again in reference to another client of ours, Fast Foods Friendly. This client, a fast food restaurant, is being sued by Imma Burger for making her elementary school child Joe and high school student Steve obese.

Every time Joe was going to go out to eat, he begged his mother to take him to Fast Foods Friendly because he saw the Happy Box commercials showing the really cool toys he could get if he ate at Fast Foods Friendly. The toys, part of a promotion, came with a kids meal that included a burger, fries, and soda.

Imma Burger complains that the meals had a minimum of 600 calories, and sometimes up to 700 calories, almost 40% of a childs daily nutrition. The meals came with no options other than a burger, fries, and soda, and the fat content and sugar content exceed the daily recommended allowance. She contends that if she did not go to Fast Foods Friendly, Joe would become irate as the commercials made the meals seem so cool.

Steve obviously is older and beyond the toys. In his high school though, he was afforded the option of leaving campus for lunch. He and his friends would regularly go to McDonalds, and based on the commercials, super size the value meal in order to get the cool cup. Once he supersized his quarter pounder with cheese meal, the burger, fries and soda added up to about 2000 calories, or about the entire daily recommended allowance for his age and then exceed the recommended allowance for fat grams and sugar.

Imma Burger is suing our client for negligent advertising and pure negligence for making her children obese.

Directions:

Your job is to prepare memo, giving the arguments (see all the elements for negligence - duty, breach, causation, proximate causation, and legally recognizable injury) that she will allege AND what do you see as our best LEGAL defense (contributory negligence, assumption of risk, or comparative negligence) and why? Is there a difference between the legal claims associated with each of the boys?