In a 4-3 decision last week, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a customer’s attempt to hold a restaurant and its suppliers liable as a matter of law after he unexpectedly swallowed a bone from what he thought was a boneless chicken wing.
The plaintiff, Michael Berkheimer, sued REKM, doing business as the restaurant Wings on Brookwood; its food supplier, GFS; and Wayne Farms, the maker of the chicken product, after he was injured while swallowing a bone that was more than an inch long from his “boneless” chicken wing. Berkheimer’s counsel, Robb S. Stokar, a Cincinnati attorney at Stokar Law, argued hthe defendants should be held liable as Berkheimer wasn’t expecting a bone to be in the food, which was represented as being free of such substance.
