Still trying his case against fast food restaurants in the court of public opinion, trial attorney Samuel Hirsch and his clients argued on Thursday’s Dr. Phil Show that the restaurant industry is responsible for the weight problems of its customers and their children.
An appalled Dr. Phil McGraw’s response: “Oh, what a load of crap! I don’t know how many grams of fat are in a Big Mac, but I’d have to be a moron to not know that it’s fattening.”
Hirsch’s latest legal strategy, promoted with help from tobacco lawyer John Banzhaf, is to sue on behalf of overweight children. But Dr. Phil handily disassembled Hirsch’s tactic of blaming restaurants.
Turning to Roberta Pelman, the mother of one teenage plaintiff, he asked: “Is anyone forcing you to buy this [fast food] for your child?” Pelman’s answer: “Forcing me? No.”
As an op-ed writer for The Chattanooga Times put it recently, “getting at the root of childhood obesity is scarcely the goal” of these fast-food lawsuits. And The Dayton Daily News weighed in last week with an editorial noting that “McDonald’s is getting a bad rap from Mr. Hirsch and his clients, no doubt about it. And it’s not fair.”
