Chocolate Yogurt as a Teaching Aid

As some of you Loyal Readers know, I teach undergraduate-level law classes online through the University of Phoenix. The extra money is nice and it's usually fun to do. After a while, it gets repetitious and almost mindless; I've given the same responses to "McDonald's lawsuit" questions so often I just cut-and-paste them from one class to the other. I usually use my "chocolate yogurt" story to deal with that particular issue. It goes something like this:

I used to represent a chain of retail electronics stores, which I cannot name (but it happens to rhyme with "Dircuit Ditty.") At one time, this retailer sold "major" appliances like refrigerators, stoves, washers, and dryers. One woman bought a refrigerator at a deep discount directly off the floor display -- the fridge she got had been repossessed from a former customer who defaulted on payments, it had a visible scratch on the side running the entire height of the unit, and was displayed with a bright fluorescent red tag saying "75% OFF -- AS-IS". It still worked, it just was used and not as attractive as a brand-new fridge. Still, when she got it home, she claimed to have terrible emotional trauma from finding out that it had been owned by someone else and -- gasp -- there were two spots of chocolate yogurt left inside the crisper unit! Now, I'm sure the yogurt smelled pretty bad. But I didn't think that she was damaged enough by having to smell spoiled yogurt to justify filing her lawsuit in a $25,000 minimum-jurisdiction court -- for fraud, no less.

By now, you're thinking to yourself, "If this isn't a frivolous lawsuit, what is?" And yes, I always thought that this was a very silly lawsuit, from its start to its (abrupt and fortunately quick) finish. But after a short time investigating the case, it was readily apparent to me that this woman really felt like she had been the victim of a terrible, terrible act. When she sent us a letter -- without the knowledge of her attorney -- that she was willing to settle for a new refrigerator and a two-deck VCR, the silliness of the lawsuit escalated dramatically in my mind, and I came to suspect that the woman was mentally unbalanced.

But, when the judge threw the case out of court on our motion a few weeks later, she accepted the result and moved on. She put her trust in the judicial system that it would resolve her claim fairly. While it was not easy or pleasant for her to absorb the loss, and losing probably stung for her, she did accept the result. There was no shooting spree at my client's store, no one-woman picket lines, no acts of petty vandalism as revenge. She was unhappy that she lost, but once a man wearing a black robe told her that she had no case, she found a way to pick up the pieces of her yogurt-shattered life, and somehow move on as best she could.

So even as silly as this lawsuit was, I would resist the idea of closing the courthouse doors to it.

Not letting people make their claims for grievances in court -- no matter how silly those grievances are -- denies society a nonviolent, effective, and (most of the time) polite dispute resolution method. Yes, there is a price society pays for having this system in place. But the alternatives are options like hiring squads of goons to beat up one's enemies or trial by combat. The price society pays for those dispute resolution methods are much higher.

That usually does the trick, although there are always one or two students who seem married to the idea that every lawsuit is a frivolous lawsuit, that there simply are no non-frivolous suits out there. Once someone becomes emotionally invested in a belief like that, there really isn't anything you can do to change their minds.

I usually have to bust out with the "chocolate yogurt" story in the first week of class. The record was set when a student asked me about the McDonald's case on the first day of class. So far, not yet with this one.

The only tedious part, usually, is reading the papers that my students turn in -- their writing skills typically have never been challenged before me. This week, no sooner than one class ended than another one began. This is not a big deal, but of course it means I need to read long, tedious papers and prepare final grades for one batch of students while I'm also getting to know a whole new batch of students.