Peanut butter - may contain peanuts Some products have disclaimers that serve no apparent purpose or which are obviously redundant. For example, a peanut butter jar that lists the ingredients as peanuts, and then provides a warning right under it which says may contain peanuts.* If a company sells a product without such a warning, what arguments could be used in court against them by a person who claimed that they read the ingredients, understood that it listed peanuts, but consumed it anyway because they weren't warned that it may contain peanuts and was injured? * I'm aware that it usually says may contain nuts because peanuts are technically legumes, but this is just an example.
When the dangerous nature of a product is or should be known to a manufacturer and the product is being used in the usual and expected manner, the manufacturer has a duty to warn of the danger. Breach of that duty can lead to liability. The case Billiar v. Minnesota Mining and Mfg contains some useful precedent for understanding the issue. It is well settled that New York law holds the supplier of a product which it knows or should know is dangerous if used in the usual and expected manner to a duty adequately to warn users of the product of the danger unless the danger is obvious or well known. ... When the user is fully aware of the nature of the product and its dangers, however, the supplier cannot be held liable for failure to warn him.... The rationale for this &quot;knowledgeable user&quot; exception is that knowledge of the danger is equivalent to prior notice; no one needs notice of that which he already knows. In this particular case, plaintiff was injured mixing an electrical resin at work, but was (deemed to be) an unskilled worker. The court recites various cases where individuals with some relevant knowledge were nevertheless harmed (and won their cases), because the warnings were insufficient. Food allergies have a special treatment, thanks to the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004. Peanuts (and other things) are &quot;mandatory warning&quot; substances, where the label must say &quot;Contains peanuts&quot;. Omitting the warning makes the food misbranded. Also note that warnings carry a &quot;prominence&quot; requirement, which does not exist for ordinary ingredients which are typically in illegible microprint. Paragraph (w) spells out the labeling requirement, which is well worth reading for its complexity. The law does include the escape clause that if the name of the product contains the name of the allergen, you have been warned. If plaintiff is suing the manufacturer pro se and stipulates, in lieu of competent legal advice, that they knew that peanut butter contained peanuts and that they were allergic to peanuts, but they ate it anyhow, the manufacturer will not be liable.
Does (Customer) have any claim or recourse against (Store)? No. The store's conduct altogether preempts a finding of unconscionable tactics. The store's conduct would not be found in violation of Oregon's Unfair Trade Practices Act (UTPA). See ORS 646.605(9) et seq. (I am not verifying the multitude of cross-references in the UTPA, but the language of explicit items gives a general idea of what types of conduct the statute sanctions) The store's decision to decline orders, preorders or money for the product impliedly alerts customers not to grow premature expectations on acquiring the product. Also the store's disclaimer of out of stock weakens a customer's possible allegation that customer relied on a promise of availability of the product. Accordingly, the store prevents a customer from credibly arguing that he incurred losses as a result of the store's conduct. Does it matter if (Product) was available in other stores or just never produced at all? Does it matter if other stores have (Product) but charge more than $N? No. The fact that the store [unsuccessfully] attempted to get stock indicates that the shortage --and hence the failure to supply the product-- is not willful. This implies that the matter is not actionable even if the customer &quot;suffered an ascertainable loss of money or property&quot;. See ORS 646.605(10) and .638. That being said, it is noteworthy 646.683(8)(a) lowers the requirement of willfulness [of violation] to one of recklessness in the context of class actions.
Plagiarism is an academic concept, not a legal one. The issue you are concerned about is copyright infringement. A work based off of another copyrighted work is a derivative work. This requires permission of the copyright holder. Simply listing your source and saying &quot;no crime intended&quot; does not help. However, recipes are generally not copyrightable (at least in the UK/US). This is because they are a list of ingredients and instructions which is not sufficient for a creative work. The presentation of the recipe can be copyrighted, as can any descriptive text surrounding it. If you're just taking the actual recipe, making a better recipe from it, and presenting that recipe in a better way, you should be fine.
Could a phrase &quot;Don't buy from X&quot; with indirectly implied material be considered defamatory? No. The phrase is only an order, wish, or instruction, which is different from making a direct or veiled statement of fact. Even in jurisdictions where a statement of opinion could be actionable, a stated wish of that sort cannot be construed as defamatory. anyone that reads the marketing material would indirectly have a false picture about company X. It depends on the contents of the marketing material, on which you did not elaborate. Persuading the customers on the basis of truthful representations as to why X's product is better than A's does not mean that people have a false image about X. The context and exact wording of someone's statements could amount to omitting and/or juxtaposing facts in a way that conveys some falsity, but your description gives no indications of that being the case here.
No. The law would be void for vagueness. Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 (1926): [T]he terms of a penal statute [...] must be sufficiently explicit to inform those who are subject to it what conduct on their part will render them liable to its penalties… and a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law. The example of the "well known but hidden stop sign" appears to allow for arbitrary prosecution and should also be void.
Can I sue If I was served a real burger after requesting a veggie burger I agree that this inquiry significantly overlaps with the post of which this one is marked by NuclearWang as possible duplicate. Thus, the answers (such as why breach of contract is inapplicable) and comments provided there largely apply here. I will only address the slight differences. I walked up to the cashier and asked was this a veggie burger? He said no. I stated that it was I ordered. He said he would make a new burger. A claim of fraud would fail in court because you will be unable to prove that the restaurant knowingly misrepresented to you (that is, despite knowing it to be false) that it was serving you a veggie burger with the intention that you would rely on that representation. Two hints indicate that the restaurant didn't act with that fraudulent intention: (1) When asked, the cashier told you that yours was not a veggie burger; and (2) he promptly indicated his intention to mend their mistake by telling you that he would make a new burger. A claim of Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED) would also fail. You wrote: After we left, my daughter who was still in the restaurant stated that they started laughing at my husband and I. The fact that the employees waited till you and your husband left reflects that they refrained from intentionally inflicting any emotional distress. A significant factor that will favor them is the fact that they stopped laughing once your daughter asked them why they were laughing: My daughter asked why were they laughing, when her parents were in the car sick from eating meat. They stopped laughing. Even if you genuinely feel disrespected by their subsequent laughter, there are no legal remedies because their laughter insofar an expression was neither obscene nor disparaging nor threatening/harassing. Laughter can be an understandable way, and possibly a psychological need, to relieve the stress from a situation like this in a context of hours of hard work in exchange for low wages with which to pay their bills. Moreover, the same fact [that they waited till you and your husband left] contradicts the allegation that they laughed "at" you. Strictly speaking, the restaurant could viably sue your daughter for defamation if the restaurant incurs any losses (including court-ordered sanctions against the restaurant) as a result of falsely attributing to it the hostile or belittling behavior implied by the particle at. By this I intend to illustrate how certain actions under pretext of extreme "sensitivity" can backfire. People elsewhere are victims of much worse misconduct or offenses that have detrimental effects and long-lasting ramifications. The court system is --if only in theory-- intended to redress wrongs which are more serious than a mistaken order at a burger restaurant.
This was at least a feature of Athenian law. In the Aristarchus of Isaeus (early 4th century BC), it is recorded that &quot;the law expressly forbids any child—or woman—to contract for the disposal of more than a bushel of barley&quot;. This is a sufficiently ancient and transmissible principle of law that there well may have been Egyptian and Sumerian analogs. You might get the details that you seek by focusing on medieval English common law.
The issue you identify isn't really a copyright issue. The same issue would arise if the product contained public domain images in the advertisements that aren't present in the work itself. Essentially, the question comes down to whether there was actionable deceptive advertising. Usually, these claims arise under specialized consumer protection statutes that offer remedies and means of enforcement different from an individualized fraud lawsuit, and usually a deceptive advertising claim is easier to prove than traditional fraud lawsuit. Traditional fraud lawsuits normally require a showing of damages caused by reasonable reliance upon the misrepresentation, which is uneconomic to prove in the case of an individual small consumer purchase. Usually, deceptive advertising of consumer products is established in a lawsuit by a government official in charge of regulating deceptive advertising or a class action lawsuit, and often statutory damages are assigned to each violation rather than requiring detailed proof of economic harm for compensatory damages from some but not other images being present. Often fine print in the advertisement or in a purchase form before buying the product discloses the disconnect. Also, the mere presence of an image in an advertisement doesn't necessary imply that it is included in the product. So prove of deceptive advertising liability in these cases is often difficult even with these relaxed standards. There are many gray area and close cases, and often, businesses settle these lawsuits rather than litigating them. A more specific answer would require knowledge of which jurisdiction's laws apply, which is often a non-trivial question in Internet based advertising lawsuits.