It's time for a favorite holiday tradition—the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform's annual list of the year's 10 most ridiculous lawsuits.

Or course, I realize it's an insidious exercise. By highlighting exceptionally dumb litigation, the implication is that plaintiffs lawyers are a bunch of scammers looking to shake down upstanding businesses, and we should hurry up and enact more tort reform.

But it's also fun.

Among the “winners” are several suits I've covered, including the one the ILR justly deemed most ridiculous of all: the fight in California over putting warning labels on coffee.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge in March ruled that dozens of coffee companies including Starbucks and Keurig failed to warn consumers that coffee contains the carcinogen acrylamide. Never mind that multiple studies have found coffee has health benefits, that the World Health Organization in 2016 took coffee off its list of carcinogens, and that drinking coffee is actually associated with a longer lifespan.

Jenna GreeneThere's also the suit against McDonalds Corp. by two customers who argued that it's an antitrust violation to charge the same price for a Quarter Pounder with or without cheese.

The humanity.

Also on the list is a suit against Canada Dry Ginger Ale for not containing real ginger. This one doesn't strike me as especially ridiculous though. After all, the Canada Dry label does say “Made from Real Ginger,” which according to the plaintiffs is not true.

It's definitely not in the same league as the all-time-ridiculous false advertising suits that were brought about a decade ago, claiming Froot Loops doesn't contain actual fruit and Cap'n Crunch with Crunch Berries doesn't contain real (crunch) berries. Compared to those suits, the ginger ale litigation is practically Brown v. Board of Education.

The ILR also flagged a so-called slack fill suit, this one against Tootsie Roll Industries Inc. for not filling its boxes of Junior Mints to the brim with candy.  

I'm with the ILR that slack fill cases are generally dumb, assuming the manufacturer discloses the contents of the package on the label. In 2016, for example, a federal judge in New York tossed a suit against Pfizer for not filling its bottles of Advil to capacity. That's because every Advil bottle clearly states the number of pills it contains and (as the judge put it) suing over the “failure to read an unambiguous tablet-count does not pass the proverbial laugh test.”

But kids are more likely to buy candy—and to be fooled into thinking that the bigger the box, the more Junior Mints they're getting. I could see how you might argue that's deceptive.

Still, it didn't work. In August, a federal judge in Manhattan dismissed the suit, though similar litigation is pending in Illinois.

In fact, if there's one takeaway from the ILR's list of ridiculous suits, it's this: The justice system is pretty good at weeding out stupid cases.

There are just 32 entries in the Junior Mints docket New York, for example. This was not a drawn-out battle. Covington & Burling's David Haller filed a motion to dismiss, a reply and a few miscellaneous documents, and that was it.

Likewise, U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas in the Southern District of Florida made short work of the Quarter Pounder suit, which he dismissed with prejudice in November—a win for Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney.

The plaintiffs claimed that charging customers who didn't want cheese the same price for a Quarter Pounder as those who did want cheese was tying, a per se antitrust violation.

For the claim to succeed, the plaintiffs would have to show that show that a slice of cheese “is a separate and distinct menu item with a separate and independent market,” Dimitrouleas wrote. “Under any common sense analysis, there is no market for a customer to come into a McDonald's restaurant and order a slice or two of 'cheese' as a product that is separate, distinct, and independent from any other product or menu item. Nor is there a separate product market for a customer to order a slice of tomato, or a slice of lettuce, or a slice of pickle, etc.”

The one suit where the courts haven't done so hot is the coffee litigation.

In March, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle found that under California's Proposition 65, coffee companies are required to warn consumers that acrylamide, which is produced at the beginning of the coffee bean roasting process, is carcinogenic.

It was a thin opinion that failed to explain why he was not swayed by evidence that coffee can also be beneficial to human health—reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, Parkinson's disease, uterine and liver cancer, cirrhosis and gout, for example.

The case was set to proceed to trial over damages, which in theory could be preposterous: $2,500 per cup of coffee consumed in California since 2010. I've had two cups today. Can I have $5,000? And also $5,000 for yesterday and the day before, going back 2,920 days for a total of $14.6 million? And that's just for me. California has 40 million people.

Already, a court of appeals has stayed the trial court proceedings pending a regulatory fix.

In June, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment proposed a new regulation clarifying that cancer warnings are not required for coffee under Prop 65.

Also, FDA head Scott Gottlieb announced that the federal agency was “deeply concerned” by Berle's ruling, and that “requiring a cancer warning on coffee, based on the presence of acrylamide, would be more likely to mislead consumers than to inform them.” In a not-so-subtle threat, he added, “Simply put, if a state law purports to require food labeling to include a false or misleading statement, the FDA may decide to step in.”

Which means I'm probably not getting my $14.6 million.

Here's the complete list of the ILR's most ridiculous lawsuits of 2018:

Man Gets $5 Million for Ant Bites (Hamilton County, Florida)

According to Tuesday's order, the corporation attempted to quash the subpoena by arguing it was immune under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, and by contending the subpoena would have required the corporation to violate its country's domestic law.

Covington & Burling partner Robert Kelner said the delay would allow Flynn to “eke out the last modicum of cooperation” in his deal to assist in a separate case being prosecuted in Alexandria, Virginia, involving two of Flynn's former business associates.

After three hours of deliberation, the jury found that the plaintiffs did not prove the companies conspired to fix U.S. prices—a win for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Squire Patton Boggs.

The Chancery Court employee was fired for contacting the Facebook CEO for support with her personal business venture–using her state email and with the subject line “Delaware Trial.”

A CBS investor has already filed a securities class action suit in New York, alleging that the company failed to enforce its own sexual harassment policies in dealing with Moonves.

On Tuesday, Baker & Hostetler's Daniel Warren, a partner in Cleveland, filed a court appearance to represent Marriott before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, which is hearing arguments on Jan. 31 in Miami over whether to coordinate the breach cases.

In case you missed it…

“Representing an innocent person,” said McDermott Will & Emery partner Mark Pearlstein, “is the most pressure of all for a defense attorney.” And his client, pharmacist Joseph Matthew “Matt” Evanosky, was “absolutely innocent,” he said.

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