The Unreasonably Dangerous Artichoke

Fellow blog The Hot Dish had an interesting post recently about a diner suing a restaurant owned by the Hillstone Restaurant Group because he was not properly instructed on how to eat an artichoke. Mr. Carvajal, the diner in question, ate the actual leaves of the artichoke, leading him to experience severe abdominal pain due to the leaves being lodged in his small bowel.

The Hot Dish asks the right question: “To what extent should restaurants be liable for the foods they serve?” For instance, should diners be warned not to eat the bones of barbecue ribs?

Other blogs have also provided commentary on this case; a post in the Miami New Times points out that Mr. Carvajal is a doctor originally from Cuba, and suggests that perhaps, he should have known better. Word of Mouth also posted on the suit, commenting that it raises questions about the balance between “helpfulness and over-familiarity” by servers. But perhaps the best commentary on the case from a legal standpoint comes from a post by On Point, which analyzes the negligence case Mr. Carvajal will be attempting to make against the restaurant as follows:

Florida, like other states, uses a “reasonable expectation” test in unfit food cases. A preparer of food “has the duty of ordinary care to eliminate or remove in the preparation of the food he serves such harmful substances as the consumer of the food, as served, would not ordinarily anticipate and guard against,” the Florida Court of Appeals said in Zabner v. Howard Johnson’s, 201 So.2d 824 (1967).

Carvajal, though, can’t recover damages for unfit food since there was nothing harmful per se in the artichoke he was served. It is not what he ate that allegedly caused his injury, but how he ate it.

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Carvajal would have a better case if his server had given him incorrect instructions on how to eat an artichoke. As the case stands now, it would expose a restaurant to liability any time a server does not explain to a customer how to eat a lobster, relieving the customer of responsibility for asking the simple question, “How do I eat this?”

While I agree with this analysis as a whole from a public policy standpoint, I’m not sure it isn’t what Mr. Carvajal ate that wasn’t the problem–he ate the entire leaf of the vegetable, instead of just the meat inside it. For my part, that’s a what and not a how as On Point describes it. But to burden restaurants and servers with explaining to each diner how to eat his food–from shrimp to ribs to bone-in steak–would be to expand the concept of duty in a negligence action far beyond the scope that the law–and common sense–ever intended.

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