The Boston Globe reports that activist lawyers are about to file a lawsuit in Massachusetts alleging a violation of the state’s consumer protection statute in the fact that public schools allow soft-drink vending machines, which are “an attractive nuisance.” Read about it here.
Hiding behind a smokescreen of professed concern for the healthfulness of student consumption habits, the trial bar wants to squeeze a ton of money out of the soft-drink industry. I suppose it might actually work in MA. Of course, the lawyers wouldn’t spend any of their gains on cigars and expensive booze.
But why aren’t the lawyers suing the schools? After all, Coke, Pepsi, at al can’t just place vending machines wherever they want. If the schools in MA just said, “take the machines out,” the alleged problem would go away. Then it wouldn’t be a get-rich-quick scheme for smarmy lawyers, though.
In the distant future, someone will write a history of the US and say that one of the reasons for the nation’s downfall was the fact that late in the 20th century, lawyers figured out that they could make loads of money by undermining freedom and individual responsibility, the very ideas upon which the country was founded.
