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Topics: Food and Drink, US News, News
Gerrard Kaonga
A Supreme Court’s decision that boneless chicken wings can include bones has been called ‘utter jabberwocky’. I guess the plot chickens.
I’m going to be frank... if I order boneless chicken wings, I expect them to come without bones.
You know, I don’t think that is too much of a tall task, however a recent ruling has insisted that there is no legal obligation for the ‘boneless’ dish to be, well... boneless.
On July 25, the Ohio Supreme court decided on a 4-3 verdict that 'boneless' chicken wings are not guaranteed to be free of bones.
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This was decided against Michael Berkheimer who filed a lawsuit against a restaurant and its suppliers after a swallowed bone, in a boneless chicken meal, resulted in him requiring two surgeries.
Nothing worse than a meal not going down well but having to go to the hospital for a bone stuck in your throat, sounds like an absolute cluck up to me...
Berkheimer was a regular at Wings on Brookwood, a chicken wing restaurant in Hamilton, Ohio, according to court documents, and fell ill after a meal back in 2016.
He went to an emergency room where doctors shockingly discovered a bone lodged in his esophagus. To make matters worse, the one and three-eighths inch bone tore his esophagus, which got infected and eventually led to those two surgeries.
His initial lawsuit was initially thrown out as he argued that the restaurant and its suppliers were negligent in failing to warn him that the 'boneless' wings could contain bones.
After multiple appeals it was brought up to the state Supreme Court.
Justice Joseph T. Deters wrote for the court majority and explained the ruling.
He said: “A diner reading ‘boneless wings’ on a menu would no more believe that the restaurant was warranting the absence of bones in the items than believe that the items were made from chicken wings, just as a person eating ‘chicken fingers’ would know that he had not been served fingers.”
However, the judges that disagreed weren’t buying that and called the ruling ‘utter jabberwocky’ (a peculiar phrase, but I agree).
Dissenting judge Justice Michael P. Donnelly added: “When they read the word ‘boneless,’ they think that it means ‘without bones,’ as do all sensible people.”