Woman angered by too-small portion size sues KFC for $20 million

[TexasTowelie]

A New York woman is accusing KFC of advertising Kentucky Fraudulent Chicken according to a suit recently filed against the fast food giant.

Anna Wurtzburger, a 64-year-old retiree, ordered a $20 bucket of fried chicken over the summer and was appalled that the bucket was not overflowing with poultry.

"They say it feeds the whole family ... They're showing a bucket that's overflowing with chicken," Wurtzburger told the New York Post. "You get half a bucket. That's false advertising, and it doesn't feed the whole family. They're small pieces!"

Unlike most people who are willing to accept the disappointment that is fast food, Wurtzburger hired a lawyer to sue the company for false advertising. Wurtzburger is asking $20 million. KFC, unsurprisingly, told the Post that the suit is "meritless."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/weird/article/KFC-lawsuit-chicken-bucket-20-million-10172640.php

[Beartracks]

1. Wonder if the suit has more legs than....

... that bucket of chicken?



===============

[UncleTomsEvilBrother]

2. As one who loves chicken...

...I'm willing to hear her out.

[jberryhill]

3. "You get half a bucket."

But is it half full, or half empty?

[TexasTowelie]

4. Another one of those great questions of perspective.

With my luck my half of the bucket would be filled with gizzards.

[jberryhill]

8. I like hearts and feet, myself

Chicken feet are fun to eat.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

12. ... but chicken hearts cause nasty farts.

... ok, please pass the bowl of chicken hearts.

[pkdu]

5. Ahem...

http://midhudsonnews.com/News/2012/March/08/Wurtzburger_denial-08Mar12.html


just puttin it out there.

[Warren DeMontague]

7. If only she preferred fried cat

...what?

[NCTraveler]

19. 200 cats removed. over 40 counts of animal cruelty. Damn.

$20 bucket's not going to feed her crew.

Says she takes better care of her cats than she does herself. I'm prone to believe her considering her KFC purchase.

[lonestarnot]

52. Chris Crispie relative?

[CentralMass]

6. I hope that she gets a full bucket of chicken and not a dime more.

[Hugin]

9. Yeah... Good luck with that.

She may get the original $20 back, which after paying her own lawyer and KFC's court costs, if it makes it that far. Her total loss will be a few grand.

[GWC58]

10. Someone needs to talk some sense into that woman!!!

Lady! You're going to lose, bigly! 🙄😱😩

[ColemanMaskell]

16. dunno. It is false advertising. And that woman who was burned on spilled coffee won her lawsuit.

Also, if she wins anything, even her $20 back, she would not have to pay KFC's court costs. She might get KFC to pay court costs including her lawyer's fees, if she wins.

Lawsuits can be lucrative hobbies for some people.

Plus admit it, don't you get tired of false advertising?
Restaurant advertising, including fast food, can be ridiculous, with photos that bear only vague resemblance to the food.

Even if she doesn't get much money out of it, maybe she'll get them to tone down their advertising.

[Codeine]

22. The bucket is filled by number of pieces, not volume.

The menus online make this clear (presumably the menus in the KFC locations do as well) so there's nothing even vaguely false about the advertising.

[jmowreader]

38. That woman who was burned on spilled coffee got third-degree burns over 6% of her body

Coffee is NOT supposed to make you need skin grafts on your vagina...but it did to Stella Liebeck. She sued the company after asking for $20,000 to cover current and future medical expenses and McD's counteroffered $800.

The $2.7 million jury award - which the judge scaled back, and was scaled back further in negotiations between the parties? Two days' coffee sales.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm

[gratuitous]

40. Indeed

It's not like McDonald's couldn't afford to get top-flight legal representation, either.

But it's an interesting development in modern life. If your cell phone provider overcharges you a buck every month for services it doesn't offer or whatever, do you even notice that your monthly bill is $121 and not $120? No, you just pay it, maybe mutter a couple of dark imprecations against Sprint, or Verizon, or AT&T, and go about your business.

Consider then, that the cell phone company has not just hundreds or thousands of customers on monthly billings, but millions. The best recourse in our legal system is the class action lawsuit, but it's incredibly ineffective and unwieldy for prosecuting these kinds of claims. Your $24 in actual damages will be substantially reduced by lawyers' fees and costs (which I don't begrudge them, they deserve to be paid for their efforts), and you wind up with a one-time billing credit of $10 or $15. Wowsers. The cell phone company takes a little hit, but it's totally out of the money they've filched from their own customers over the years. Does it actually make a hit to their legitimate earnings?

The law has to catch up with our consumer product reality, and put the onus on the companies (not consumers) to provide accurate billings for services rendered. Allow for treble damages or a minimum damage payout to ripped off customers; provide for separate award of attorney's fees to lawyers who take on these cases; and an additional fine to help pay for administrative enforcement.

[ColemanMaskell]

46. Yeah, class action lawsuits are the way to go if possible

because a class action lawsuit might not get you much personally, but as a public service it does the most toward discouraging the objectionable behavior.

If somebody has the time and the inclination, and is civic-spirited, and either has the money or can find a good lawyer who will take it on for just a big cut of any award he secures, then I say go for it as a public service.

Look at all Ralph Nader accomplished. He was one guy, the same as anybody else. He made a difference.

If you don't care about public service and you just want to get $20, that's what Small Claims Courts are for.

However I also agree with your point at the end, that the laws for consumer protection could be better, and better enforced. There have been times in the past when consumer protection laws were more of an issue -- they did ban cigarette advertising over a range of platforms, and alcohol ads are also limited (though those should both be more limited than they are).

Also on lawsuits -- the NRA managed, not long ago, to get a law of some sort passed to prevent people from suing gun manufacturers for injuries, but I don't know all the details of that. If we want to strengthen consumer protection laws, backing that one off would be a good start.

[Warren DeMontague]

55. I know other people have mentioned it, but the "coffee burn lawsuit" was misrepresented by the right

it was turned into this example of "lawsuits out of control" but the burn victim actually had a real valid case. She needed skin grafts all over her groin due to 3rd degree burns from coffee put in a styrofoam cup well beyond the melting point of styrofoam, and then handed to her in a drive-thru window.

McDonalds knew they were giving out their coffee way too fucking hot in these cups, but didn't do anything about it.

[no_hypocrisy]

11. It's more false advertising.

The commercial with George Hamilton has the bucket full to the edge with chicken.

[Orrex]

13. She probably didn't receive George Hamilton, either.

[ColemanMaskell]

47. Thank you. False advertising.

So after the lawsuit, KFC will have little-bitty printed messages in the subtitle area or off to the side, or else maybe an auctioneer-speed fast-talker at the end, stating that pictures of products shown in the ad do not correspond to actual product, the appearance of which will vary.

[Orrex]

14. Clearly she's the victim of fowl play

Oh, come on. Somebody was going to post it, and it might as well be me.

[Codeine]

15. There's a Colonel of truth to that. nt

[tavernier]

17. Yeah, figured some turkey would post it.

[appal_jack]

18. Hope she gets to feather her nest from all this.

KFC may find the yard birds coming home to roost.

-app

[sinkingfeeling]

20. How can it be false advertising? Their menu clearly states the

number of pieces of chicken in each bucket. The $20.49 bucket of chicken only has 12 pieces. She could also have gotten a 16 or 20 piece bucmet.

[ColemanMaskell]

48. Her complaint is about the TV advert, not the menu.

She might have ordered over the phone and never seen the menu.

The TV Advert is still false advertising, whether she saw the menu or not. The TV Advert was used to lure her under false pretences. She may have made a decision to go to KFC based on the TV Advert, and invited friends to meet her there, all based on a fraudulent representation.

Just because we become accustomed to being lied to and mistreated doesn't absolve the perpetrators.

[jberryhill]

57. +1

[KWR65]

21. KFC is too expensive

I can but a pound of cooked chicken strips for $5 at the grocery and pay $12 at KFC. No thank you.

[ColemanMaskell]

49. overpriced, yes. also the food is unpredictable.

When you cook your own food, you have a better idea of what you're getting.

Some people, for various reasons, are unable to prepare their own food. Traveling maybe, or lack facilities or abilities, maybe stuck in a hospital bed incapacitated for days until, in the throes of desperation, they watch TV all day until their minds become so numbed by it that eventually they succumb to the lure of false advertising, and give in to an unholy urge to order fast food over the telephone. Possibly might need an intermediary, the fast food people might not deliver to hospitals, I don't know. I should think one would order a pizza though; but to each his own.

Have sympathy for the desperate souls with no better option than KFC.

[panader0]

23. KFC could solve this by using a smaller bucket.

[ColemanMaskell]

50. Yup.

[Calculating]

24. Total joke lawsuit

The menu clearly says how many pieces of chicken you get. The only thing she could complain about is the size of the pieces provided, and that would be opening a big can of worms. Suddenly it would be ok to sue any kind of fast food join where the pieces of food vary in size.

[Initech]

25. Has this woman never seen an advertisement?

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

31. Actually, the last Big Mac I had was more like the web ad

I found it slightly more disturbing than a smooshed Mac.

[kwassa]

35. I've worked on a food shoot for McDonalds ....

in the early 80s, when the McRib was first introduced.

McDonalds had a fake store in an industrial park in the City of Industry strictly built for commercials. There was a lighting grid in the ceiling, and everything was on wheels, including the fake bushes outside. Two front entrances, too. We spend days doing just the close-up of the food. It is a commercial specialty.

Food shoots are full of fake. Beer, for instance, was often tea with detergent added for foam. Food would be sprayed with acrylic to make it shinier, and make the colors deeper in the photography. All kinds of tricks.

[napi21]

26. She should loose the case BECAUSE of animal cruelty! I know, it's not related, but

people who hoard animals, even if their intentions are good, deserve to be punished. There's NO WAY anyone can keep 150 cats AND treat them humanely. EVEN shelters limit the # of animals they keep BECAUSE there's a limited number they can care for.

[Motley13]

27. the maggot is probably behind that suit

[Iggo]

28. Popeye's. (n/t)

[irisblue]

43. love them.....guilty pleasure

[Dirty Socialist]

32. Here's your 20 bucks back, lady

Now GO AWAY!

[yellowcanine]

34. Quite sure they go by number of pieces, not how much it fills up the bucket.

Also how much the bucket is filled up likely depends on which kind of pieces you order and are willing to pay for.

Any lawsuit is nuts let alone one for 20 million. Now if there was a fried mouse in the bucket and she bit into it she might have a case - but still not 20 million.

[Quantess]

36. Whose side am I gonna take? The horrible corporation YUM! Brands, or some fat-assed nitwit?

KFC, unsurprisingly, told the Post that the suit is meatless Wow, really? I WISH! Just kidding

I have boycotted YUM! Brands (Taco Bell, KFC, and a couple of other fast food chains) because they torture their poor meat chickens more than anyone else!!!

For that --and that's the only justification-- I hope the dissatisfied customer smacks that horrible YUM! Brands corporation upside the head. FUCK YUM! Brands into chicken hell

[Renew Deal]

37. I was in a KFC in NY where a customer was complaining about this exact thing

They ordered the "$5 Fill Up." They said that the food looked nothing like the picture that was overflowing with food and I agreed with them. The girl behind the counter was unsympathetic. Not sure it's all KFC's fault. They show an open box, but send you home with a closed box. I've noticed their buckets of chicken have gotten smaller as well.

[Major Nikon]

42. The meal in the picture is 890 calories, not including drink

So regardless of what it looks like, that's a lot of food.

[ColemanMaskell]

51. Class action lawsuit!

[Rex]

39. Why did the chicken cross the road? It needed to raise money for KFC!

ASAP! FINALLY someone DID what we all have thought of doing in the past! KFC is a shadow of what it once was.

[Major Nikon]

41. A 12 piece bucket of original recipe has 2600 calories

KFC doesn't advertise this as a "meal". The meal includes 3 large sides and 6 biscuits which almost doubles the calories. This works out to over 860 calories per person not including drinks. If you ate 3 meals of this size per day, that would be almost 2600 calories, which is well over the government guidelines.

[Mc Mike]

44. I'm a little traumatized just reading about the event.

[Warren DeMontague]

54. wouldn't a more rational assesment of the damages here be something like

a new bucket of chicken?

[jberryhill]

58. No

I haven't seen the actual civil complaint, and popular press articles on legal matters are notoriously unreliable.

My guess would be that she is positioned as a representative plaintiff of the class of consumers who were deceived by the manner in which KFC advertises its chicken. If that is the case, then 20M strikes me as low.