McThis, McThat…it’s Totally Tortelicious…

January 26th, 2010. By LucyC

Welcome to Totally Tortelicious—a review of some of the more bizarre lawsuits making news. Goodness knows there’s no shortage of them.  

C’mon…Someone Needs to get Happy… I’ll bet Ronald McDonald is in desperate need of a Happy Meal or likely something a good deal stronger about now, as his employer, the fast food giant McDonald’s, is suing Boston University student, Lauren McClusky over the name of a charity event she set up when she was in high school and still runs today, the Mc.Fest. Yes, this from the company that recently had the you-know-whats to launch a McItaly campaign…

According to the official website, “Mc.Fest is an annual music festival and fundraiser organized by Lauren McClusky and a team of students and future professionals. It is dedicated to support and promote Special Olympics using music as its driving force. Mc.fest encourages young adults and teenagers to give back to the community.” Maybe Ms. McClusky, who claims she named the event after her family name, should be counselling tired professionals at McDonald’s on the basics of community spirit. 

So far, Mc.Fest has raised $30,000 for its cause, according to a report on UPI.com. That sounds threatening to me… 

Lawyers at Work….

Attracting the Wrong “Class” of People? A law firm in California is facing a defamation suit over some rather zealous and arguably ill advised advertising it undertook on YouTube. The advertising was in fact a video for a class action it was involved in against Brian Research Labs, the maker of a diet supplement called Procera AVH. It seems the problem is not so much the content, but the medium used to present the content, if I read this right… 

In his ruling on the matter, San Francisco Superior Court judge, Harold Kahn, said that the law firm, by using new media, was not speaking to its targeted or specific audience—but any English-speaking individual who has an internet connection. (Isn’t that the point of YouTube?) And that’s the problem? You can make defamatory statements, but choose your audience carefully?

Apparently the “audience” for Procera AVH is, uhh, shall we say folks of a certain age—folks who experience “Forgetfulness, BrainFog, Poor Focus, Mood Swings, and Mental Fatigue” brought on by aging, stress, sleep loss and poor diet. That info is straight from Procera’s website. Seems to me though that three out of four of those “brought on by” qualifiers depict the majority of college students I know. Young’uns, so to speak—who, by the way, may just be clicking away over at YouTube. (And just in case you were wondering, the PewResearchCenter reported that 74% of baby boomers used the internet in 2008; no word on how many were clicking “play” on YouTube.)

The irony in all of this is that the attorney representing the law firm that is being sued (who I shall not name for fear of being sued), is concerned that this could “really hamper an attorney’s ability to communicate with potential class members if you can’t do so on the Internet.” Are you kidding? What did law firms do before YouTube and the Internet? Ah, maybe these lawyers are all in their thirties…or maybe I’m just experiencing BrainFog…

Tags: McDonald's, McFest, Procera AVH

This was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 8:09 pm and is filed under Totally Tortelicious . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.