George Washington University Professor Wages Legal War on 'Obesity Crisis'.

Publication: The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Connecticut) (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News)

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COPYRIGHT 2003 The Hartford Courant

Byline: Rinker Buck

Jul. 13--WASHINGTON--The opponents of big class-action lawsuits that cost American corporations billions of dollars a year -- among them several prominent policy-makers in the Bush administration -- know that they don't have to look very far to find the Osama bin Laden of torts.

He is George Washington University Law School Professor John F. Banzhaf, whose cluttered office, piled high with the detritus of more than 30 years of fighting broadcasters, the tobacco industry and pharmaceutical companies, sits five blocks from the White House. A plaster "Sue the Bastards" statue adorns the front of his desk and newspaper headlines identifying him as a "Legal Terrorist" hang on the walls. Now the dean of public interest lawyers, who has led his students in suing everyone from dry cleaners (for charging women more than men) and former Vice President Spiro Agnew (to recover the bribes he received in office), is proud to announce his next crusade on behalf of America.

This time Banzhaf and his followers among the nation's liability bar have declared war on the "obesity crisis," and the parties they hold most responsible for America's bulging waistline, the purveyors of fast food.

"There are now seven different obesity cases working their way through the courts and I'm only involved a little bit in each one," Banzhaf said. He ticks off on his fingers cases that range from a suit against a Florida company accused of underreporting the fat content of its ice cream, to a lawsuit being argued in New York on behalf of obese teenagers who eat at McDonald's. Banzhaf prefers to depict the explosion of lawsuits against food companies as a spontaneous outpouring of social concern about health, rather than the work of a few liability lawyers who smell large settlements similar to those that siphoned off coffers of tobacco and asbestos manufacturers in the 1980s and 1990s.

"The way all of this got started...

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