Customers ordering a boneless chicken wing should not assume there may not be a bone in the product, according to an Ohio Supreme Court ruling Thursday.
The case was brought by Michael Berkheimer, who sued a restaurant, chicken farm, and food supplier after he ate “boneless wings” only to have a “5cm-long chicken bone” tear his esophagus and cause an infection, along with subsequent medical issues. He argued that it was not a reasonable expectation for him to expect a bone in his “boneless” wings.
The high court in the Buckeye State ruled 4-3 that the bone was not a foreign substance and that the customer should have assumed a boneless chicken wing may still have bones.
“Regarding the food item’s being called a ‘boneless wing,’ it is common sense that that label was merely a description of the cooking style,” Justice Joseph Deters wrote.
“A diner reading ‘boneless wings’ on a menu would no more believe that the restaurant was warranting the absence of bones in the items than believe that the items were made from chicken wings, just as a person eating ‘chicken fingers’ would know that he had not been served fingers. The food item’s label on the menu described a cooking style; it was not a guarantee,” he added.
The three dissenting justices had a bone to pick with Deters’s majority opinion.
Justice Michael Donnelly, writing in the dissent, argued that a jury should have been allowed to rule on Berkheimer’s claims rather than the summary judgment offered by the high court and lower courts before. He also took a jab at Deters’s discussion about “chicken fingers” not being actual fingers, and contended with his point on boneless wings including bones.
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“The majority’s burst of common sense was short-lived, however, because its opinion also says that no person would conclude that a restaurant’s use of the word ‘boneless’ on a menu was the equivalent of the restaurant’s ‘warranting the absence of bones,'” Donnelly said.
“Actually, that is exactly what people think,” Donnelly added. “It is, not surprisingly, also what dictionaries say. ‘Boneless’ means ‘without a bone.'”