What responsibility, if any, does the customer bear in avoiding harm to himself?

The onions in question are a burger topping, and are readily discoverable if the customer checks their order. I think that the customer with the special requirement can be reasonably expected to verify their order meets their needs before incurring harm.

I believe he’s already suing Sonic for the same issue. He knew (or should have known) this was a mistake that restaurants can potentially make, yet he apparently made no effort of his own to mitigate the risk by checking his food before eating.

I would argue that it is “reckless” for the customer to blindly trust the worker fulfilled the special instructions, and that this “recklessness” is the primary cause of the harm incurred.

I would say that the restaurant’s liability here is the cost of the “defective” burger.

I would call it “frivolous” when the primary purpose of a case seems to be for two teams of lawyers to generate billable hours for eachother.

Patent vs latent defect. Any issue with the product that the customer could reasonably identify before suffering harm is the customer’s responsibility to avoid. The vendor’s liability here is the cost of the burger. The vendor is not liable for the harm arising from the customer’s failure to look at the food they are about to eat.

The vendor is responsible only for harm caused by defects the customer could not reasonably avoid. Hiddent, latent defects.

If this is a case of subrogation, as I suspect, the customer acquired insurance coverage for the purpose (in part) of mitigating harm due to their own negligence. If this is the case, it is that insurance policy that is liable for the harm caused by the customer’s failure to verify the burger met their requirements.

Yeah but isn’t it a criminal act to poison

“Poison” implies someone deliberately intended to cause harm. Nothing has been presented to argue that someone deliberately intended harm.

I mean, if I was allergic, I wouldn’t trust the restaurant either,

Exactly. This is what a reasonable, prudent person would do. If the customer had checked their order, they would have discovered the problem before any harm arose.

Which is why this guy’s health insurance should simply cover this: simple negligence by the insured is not a valid justification for denying coverage.

It would be different if we were talking about something that the customer couldn’t have verified. But the presence or absence of onions topping a burger is easily verified before consumption; the customer was not reliant on the restaurant to ensure their own safety. They had the ability to prevent this particular harm through a simple, reasonable action that they failed to perform.

IMO, that means their liability here is the cost of the burger. They would have been expected to replace the burger if the customer had checked.

But the real takeaway here is Fuck Health Insurance. If this is, indeed, subrogation as I suspect, we should be picketing an insurance executive.

I doubt that he’s the one actually suing. I suspect that the actual plaintiff is his health insurer.

So many of these frivolous lawsuits ultimately originate from the insurance industry.

I’m betting that this is subrogation: His health insurer doesn’t want to pay his medical bills, so they are filing suit in his name.

I’m betting this is another example of subrogation..

I’d bet that this guy’s health insurance refuses to pay out unless they can file suit in his name. The overwhelming majority of these bullshit lawsuits only exist because of scumbag insurers.

Remember that lady who sued her nephew? Her medical insurance refused to pay her medical bills unless they were allowed to sue the nephew’s homeowner’s insurance in her name.

Never attribute to the named plaintiff what is adequately explained by subrogation.

The guy didn’t lose anything. He will fund someone better.

Not sure if typo, or cynicism.