A Chicago man is suing Shaw’s Crab House after passing a 9-foot tapeworm he contends came from consuming undercooked fish. Anthony Franz claims he became violently ill after eating the salmon salad at Shaw’s, and is suing the restaurant and its parent company, Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, for $100,000.
A representative of Lettuce Entertain You denies Franz’s allegations, but documents filed with Franz’s lawsuit indicate that a pathologist found that the tapeworm could have only come from undercooked fish.
Man Says 9-Foot Tapeworm Came From Undercooked Salmon Salad [Chicago Sun-Times]
Thanks to Mark!
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How long does it take to “pass” a nine-foot tapeworm? Is that like an hour?
Never mind, I don’t want to know.
@Reeve: Didn’t say that. I mean that I am pissed at people for filing stupid suits. The legal system is built the way it is for a reason, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. However, I wish people would be smart enough to not file stupid lawsuits. Wishful thinking on my part, I know.
@EyeHeartPie:
“But no…people are greedy and want tens of millions of dollars because they spilled hot coffee on their own lap, claiming they didn’t know how hot it was.”
Entirely wrong. She won about $3 million, which a judge later knocked down to just under 500k. But anyway, what I’ve gathered is that you support punitive damages, but not necessarily that they be given to the plaintiff. Not a bad idea actually
@EyeHeartPie: Small a comfort as it may be, I’ve read cases where defendants have counter-sued for legal costs, and won, I believe on a slip-and-fall suit. So occasionally people who file illegitimate suits do get punished.
I believe that the Swiss have a legal system where if a plaintiff loses the claim, they have to pay the court costs of the other side, and if they win, the other side pays their court costs, which is at least a decent way to combat the frivolous lawsuits.
From wikipeida: With exception of the social law some parts of the employment law the costs of all the participants of the lawsuit (including the costs of the opponent) have to be paid by the loser. (search “Law of Germany”).
@Darkwing_Duck: Yes. Exactly. Punitive damages are intended to punish the defendant, but why should the plaintiff be given that money that is just to punish the defendant? It should be like a fine, not an award to the person suing. The punitive damages bit should go to the local government or to a fund/cause of the court’s choosing. Punitive damages are usually the much larger part of the award (example: $300,000 for medical bills and loss of work, $4,000,000 for punitive damages), and are the main reason people file lawsuits. If it were a rule that punitive damages were not awarded to the plaintiff, I think the number of frivolous suits would drop immediately.
@EyeHeartPie: Whenever you sue for medical claims and such, you are supposed to sue for 5x whatever things cost. You never know what could come up 2, 3, 5, 10 years down the road as a result of this.
Additionally, I think having to “pass” a NINE FOOT tape worm should qualify for a hefty pain & suffering claim. Personally I think 100k is a little on the short end, I would’ve asked for at least 1m, settled for 500k, and taken my now-30lbs-lighter self to the caribbean for a nice vacation!
@plural_of_moose: I think that would be another big step to combating frivolous suits. Hoorah for the Swiss.
Is wormtherapy.com for real, or is it another manbeef.com?
(before manbeef.com turned into a porn site
@EyeHeartPie: Juries tend to add the money into compensatory damages in places where punitive damages are capped (ie, well, the cop beat you for videotaping your traffic stop, but state law says can’t hit the city for punitive damages despite letting this happen a number of times before, having a racist police chief, etc…then they decide your emotional damages are really high. Juries, in theory at least, have a mixture of people who fall on both ends of the spectrum for punishing businesses and such). If they want to reward a person and teach a company a lesson, they will probably find a way to get it in there. Whether/how much of that survives any appeals is another issue, but generally if punitive damages are on the table in a jury’s mind, something has been done to *anger* them, not just make them feel sorry for the plaintiff
@fredmertz: My family already has overactive thyroids. I’ve got to eat about 3k-5k cal to maintain my weight of 125lbs. Depends on how active I was that day. I’ve been between 105 and 135 within the past 4 years. Toss in the fact that the tape worm was helping itself to the nutrients that my sister was trying to consume to maintain her body weight. Its already a pain for me to eat so much food just to maintain a “healthy” body weight. I can’t imagine how much I’d have to eat to keep myself and a tapeworm feelin better.
After she got rid of the tape worm, she was able to put on about 10-15lbs pretty easily. No scientific proof other than the fact of before and after.
And I refuse to take drugs to slow my thyroid down. I’m not lookin to be a drugged up zombie
I’m not sure what makes me want to vomit more:
The name of the restaurant/company: Lettuce Entertain You
The thought of crapping out a big friggen tapeworm
tapeworms in general
eating raw or undercooked fish
eating fish at all
I say d: all of the above.
And I am not a squeamish person at all!
– gc3160
website: thegc.deviantart.com
email: gc3160@NOSPAMcharter.net –
@plural_of_moose: Do cops ever get fired? All I ever hear about in the news after some fiasco involving law enforcement is that the cop is on paid suspension/administrative leave (read: paid vacation).
@Zeniq: Not only that, but tapeworms themselves usually don’t cause violent illness, it’s most commonly caused by malnutrition as a result of having the tapeworm for quite some time. I think the pathologist told him it came from a fish, so he thought about the last fish he ate and that’s where logic and science took a back seat to him planning for his vacation at Shaw’s expense.
@Schmanz: I agree on the lake caught thing. Unless he paid $30 for that salad, he was probably eating farm raised salmon which live in a (mostly) clean environment.
@Paul D: I agree with you on being against tort reform, however, I believe that a defendant should only be reimbursed for what they lost to make things equal, not make someone rich. The rest of the money should be placed in an account where it does nothing except collect interest and pay for relevant expenses. If people realized they wouldn’t get rich off of these lawsuits, they wouldn’t happen, and the people with real grievances could be heard.
Personally, I think he should have named the tapeworm, then gone back and refiled his taxes with the tapeworm as his dependent. With a 9ft long tapeworm, he could have gone back at least 5 years.
I wouldn’t worry about sushi in the U.S. The fish is thawed after freezing, and freezing kills any parasites. Some high end restaurants may sell fresh fish raw, but the cheaper places are almost certainly going to use frozen fish. It costs them less and is easier to stock.
In Washington State any restaurant serving eggs, fish or meat uncooked or rare has to put a warning on the menu. If you have a compromised immune system, or are just kind of nervous, you should avoid the dishes in question or ask for the item cooked well done. No one is going to sneak a medium rare burger or raw fish onto your plate.
As for $100K, that might be reasonable, but it is going to be hard to prove that the worm or cyst was ingested at a particular meal. Let’s face it, a nine foot worm implies a fair lag time. Feeling sick later that evening or the morning after, courtesy of salmonella or e. coli, is easier to trace. (I keep a food diary, so I might be able to track things, but I’m a weirdo).
@Rippleeffect: Thyroid antagonists aren’t sedatives; they just reset the thyroid thermostat, leaving you no more a zombie than anybody else with a normal thyroid.
@temporaryerror: I don’t know about this specific company, but it’s definitely a going theory at the moment, and there seems to be some reasonable studies indicating that helminthic therapy can be useful in those with autoimmune bowel diseases such as Crohn’s. However, none of those recommended a nine-foot tapeworm.
Throwing the McDonald’s Coffee Case as an example of frivolous isn’t going to work here.
She got the coffee, it was boiling hot, she recieved 3rd degree burns over 6 percent of her body less than 5 minutes after ordering. Burns covered her legs and butt, including her anus, perineum and clitorus. IMO, I think she deserved a lot of compensation. I certainly couldn’t live the same life after that. If someone’s dick got burned that badly because of negligence, then many more would likely agree, since it’s now in terms they can understand.
This case is a 9 foot tapeworm, It took years to develop. Burden of Evidence or not, I don’t think he’s getting a cent out of this.
I agree that frivolous law suits should be ended – not awarding ridiculous punitive damages to the plaintiff is a good start. If someone is injured or wronged by a corporation, they should receive expenses plus a reasonable sum, the rest should go to charity. That way businesses are held accountable, but people aren’t suing in a “get rich quick scheme.”
Oh, and I’ve had the opportunity to sue when I slipped on wet stairs and broke an ankle at a local zoo (even though I was being reasonable and holding a hand rail and treading carefully – not a small drink spill, stairs were soaking wet with no wet floor signs). I didn’t sue. I asked for my medical bills to be covered, which they happily did. Could I have easily taken them to court for bills + lost wages + pain and suffering? Yes. But I’m not a greedy person and they compensated me reasonably. That’s how the system should work.
A tapeworm is a great weight loss program. He should thank them and have birthday parties for it. Eat as much cake as you want.
@Cattivella:
Punitive damages are not available in ordinary negligence cases – they only come in for special cases. The McDonald’s case was a products liability and inadequate warning case which is significantly different then an ordinary negligence case. Further, a lot of time when people file these suits after the company will not pay their basic medical expenses. Back to the McDonald’s case – the plaintiff there offered to settle for a lot less money before they filed suit. After filing suit they continued to try and settle for less money. It was McDonald’s who refused to settle for cost. Why punitive damages are necessary in products liability – among other reasons here is one rationale: if you have $7,000 worth of “actual” damages you will end up paying the entire amount to your lawyer. By offering higher awards people are enticed to bring a suit which helps keep company’s honest for faulty products.
A note – the US Supreme Court has been moving in the direction of very limited punitive damages ie now it is virtually impossible to get disproportionately large punitive damages when compared to actual damages.
Finally, everyone should look above to see that one reason people claim larger damages is to leave room to settle. Around 90% of cases never go to trial – most cases settle for significantly less than asked for. If you actual damages are $7,000 and you sue for that it is unlikely you will end up settling and recovering your actual damages.
@Crazytree: Yeah, read the details on that video. It’s fake–thank God, because I love me some Pork Chops. I was going to have to hate you for that.
More on topic, I agree with the others who say he’s going to have a hell of a time convincing them that he hasn’t had any other undercooked fish in the time it takes for a tapeworm to mature.
Maybe him feeling sick was the tapeworm that he got from that meal fighting to the death with the one he already had.
What an idiot. He should have video taped the passing of that worm, built a website and posted the video on youtube. Leveraging google adsense, that person could have made more than 100K$. The web is a sick place
@godlyfrog: There are a lot of restaurants that also sells wild salmon. Although we all know that most salmon we see at the store and some restaurants are farm raised salmon, but more of the upscale stuff sells wild salmon, and on the menu, it does say wild salmon.
Although its quite rare to find tapeworm in farm raised salmon, there is a slight possibility that it could of come from the salmon.
The life cycle of a tapeworm is actually quite simple. Immature eggs are passed through feces by mammals (including humans) which are then eaten by crustaceans, and then eaten by small fish then the big fish eats the small fish and mammals eat the big fish that at the small fish and vice verca.
Tapeworms usually causes malnutrition …
And well… they can live very long. Apparently up to 20 years!! O_O
“Look Mommie! That from the restroom man has a tail!!”
Pics or it didn’t happen.
@couponwhore: Thank you for pointing that out! Someone always drags out the McD’s coffee case in these instances, and frankly, that WAS a fairly justified case. Not to mention, the lady originally just wanted her medical bills paid, and McD’s refused.
wait a minute, he got violently ill for several days after eating the salad and then later? passed the worm? how much later? it took a while for the worm to grow to 9-feet unless it was that size when he ate it. get real.