Do you find yourself at the movie theatre paying what seems like 4x the price for candy than what you would pay for it at a convenience store? Do you get even more frustrated when you open that candy up and find that the box was much larger than it needed to be for the contents inside?
Well, one woman had enough with what she felt was a 50% candy, 50% air ratio in her box of candy! She is suing the makers of Mike & Ike’s for false advertising. Rather than sue the movie theatres (which don’t package the candy), the woman decided to go straight to the source and sue the candy’s producers. While it’s not a criminal matter, if the company is found to have deceptively advertised they may face legal consequences beyond any decision which may be handed down in civil court.
While the story is fun and a bit goofy (it is a story about a lawsuit over candy after all), it also highlights the importance of understanding that courts aren’t just for criminal law – civil law is a big part of court too.
If you’ve been wronged in a situation, would you know if you could sue to be ‘made whole’? The courts exist to help society maintain fairness among its members, but they can only be put to use if the citizens know how to utilize legal services.
Questions:
1: Even at a movie theatre, a box of candy won’t cost more than $10. In many states, to file a court case you have to spend around $30 just to file paperwork that launches a court case against another person. Even after you file, it can take months before a case ends up in a courtroom! What are some reasons this woman would have taken the time to sue the candy company?
2: It seems like a person can be sued for anything these days! Why do you think that is fair or unfair?
3: Lawsuits in civil court (where people sue each other) tend to happen when two people do not agree on something. No one goes to jail just because of a lawsuit in civil court, but money can be awarded to either the person suing (the plaintiff) or even the person being sued (the defendant) if the court thinks the lawsuit was just wasting the defendants time and money. Given those conditions, imagine a situation that you don’t think a court would bother hearing (meaning someone would file a lawsuit, and a judge would say ‘sorry, the court will not be having this lawsuit be a ‘court case’), and explain why the court would decide not to hear the case.
Be sure to provide full explanations for your answers. For more details, you can read the article this piece was sourced from here:
http://time.com/money/4669468/mike-ike-lawsuit-just-born/?xid=time_socialflow_twitter
