Giving the Finger

On April 21, police arrested 39-year-old Anna Ayala at her home outside Las Vegas. Ayala, who made headlines when she claimed that she had come across part of a human finger in a bowl of chili at a Wendy’s restaurant in San Jose, California on March 22, was taken into custody on charges of attempted grand larceny after law enforcement officials declared her story to be a hoax.

What’s alarming about the fast food finger fiasco isn’t just that it involved a woman allegedly inserting a disembodied finger into her own bowl of chili, but that she assumedly did so as part of a concocted get-rich-quick scheme. True, I make an assumption here about Ayala’s motives, but when she hired an attorney and threatened to sue immediately after reporting her fraudulent claim, Ayala made that assumption a safe one.

American culture, it seems, has become so litigious that Americans are now able to see financial gain in planting body parts in fast food. That’s a frightening reality, and it is a distinctly American one; in no other country are lawsuits so prevalent as in America, where, according to Citizens for a Sound Economy, a lawsuit is filed every ten seconds of every working hour. These lawsuits are a problem, and not simply because they give cynical Canadians (like me) fodder for making fun of American culture. By perpetuating a mindset that is over-eager to assign blame to others, frivolous lawsuits are exceedingly costly, and give Americans a great excuse not to take ownership of their own lives and fates.

Heath care is likely the most important victim of America’s insatiable urge to sue; fears of malpractice suits push doctors to over-medicate their patients and employ expensive medical procedures excessively. In the last thirty years, for example, the number of American babies delivered by Caesarian section has increased five-fold, an increase fueled in part by bank-breaking jury awards in malpractice suits that found doctors liable for the pain and suffering of patients born with congenital diseases, such as cerebral palsy. A 2003 study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, however, found that, despite the increased number of Caesarian sections performed, the rate of cerebral palsy has remained constant. In other words, Americans with health insurance face elevated malpractice premiums, and doctors are compelled to over-treat their patients because of lawsuits that end in massive indemnities but that are grounded in speculation rather than scientific fact. That’s scary.

Other kinds of American lawsuits provide even greater cause for alarm. In 2002, the families of several obese teenagers sued McDonald’s, claiming that the fast-food giant was responsible for making their children fat. The plaintiffs asserted that McDonald’s had deliberately misled them by withholding information about the nutritional content of its food. The mother of one of the teenagers, who, at 15, weighed in at over 400 pounds, claimed that she had “always believed McDonald’s was healthy for my son.”

Take it from someone who grew up overweight—being fat is no fun. But it’s also not the fault of fast-food companies, whose greasy, salty, sugary offerings Americans have consumed in excess for decades. By suing and attempting to extract punitive awards from these companies, obese Americans shift ownership for a very serious health problem to restaurants and away from themselves. Not only is this transfer of blame mildly delusional (induced, perhaps, by over-medication), it also damages efforts at addressing America’s obesity epidemic, which only stands a chance of being combated when Americans take responsibility for their own health. Efforts at holding McDonald’s liable for obesity are, therefore, highly counter-productive.

Excessive and frivolous lawsuits, and the culture of blame that they engender, are regrettable and damaging. As Americans continue to be enslaved by the compulsion to point the (severed, chili-stained) finger, however, the rest of the world has little choice but to sit back and watch in amusement.

Adam Goldenberg ’08, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Grays Hall.