LITTLE ROCK — A Springdale resident has joined the national fray in deciding to sue the Subway chain when the sandwiches he ordered in that town supposedly came up slightly shorter than the company claims.
In a federal lawsuit seeking class action status, Vincent Gotter contends his sandwiches measured just short of the heavily promoted foot-long and 6-inch sandwiches the restaurant offers. Gotter didn’t disclose just how far short his sandwiches measured.
My initial reaction was to regain control of both eyeballs that had rolled far enough back into my sockets to see the hollow darkness there. I stopped quivering and whispered: “Wait, why shouldn’t a customer question the advertising if he feels he’s been misled into buying into an untruth?”
I mean, if someone can successfully sue McDonald’s for its hot coffee actually being hot, it seems equally logical to sue Subway if its foot-long really isn’t. At a quarter-inch or so short of advertised (times hundreds of thousands of sandwiches sold nationally), pretty soon you’re talking about folks purchasing an awful lot of non-existent sandwiches, right?
Yeah, I’ll concede that taking Subway to court over a quarter-inch or less sounds at first blush like a frivolous suit. Yet Gotter’s suit points out that the company said it sold in Arkansas more than 18 million 6-inch subs (totaling $36.7 million) during the three most recent years in question at an average price of more than $2 each. Based on Gotter’s proposed ciphering, if the sandwiches were 3 percent too short (a quarter-inch for a foot-long sub and an eighth of an inch for a 6-inch sub) the amount of damages over three years would be at least $5.6 million.
The suit claims the short subs violate the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
The matter of reliable weights and measures extends well beyond the present day or the honest length of a sandwich. Even the scriptures speak about the need for honest weights and measures in our dealings with each other.
What about all the gasoline pumps we use that mysteriously (and aggravatingly) jump ahead by at least a penny on the dollar? How about a burger advertised as a half-pound of beef that might truly weigh 7.5 ounces after it’s cooked? What of a butcher selling you 0.8 pound of fish that reads as a full pound on the store’s scale? Calculate that potential loss to one or more customers (or gain for an unscrupulous merchant) over a year at, say, $22 a pound for sea bass.
Years ago I took a gold ring initially measured on a state-certified jeweler’s scale to a variety of pawnshops and jewelers to see what their scales said it weighed. I wanted to see how much they’d offer for the gold it contained.
Valued by the gram, even the tiniest amount of weight difference in gold quickly amounts to a chunk of money. The weight results I got on several of those mostly uncertified scales in these stores fluctuated significantly along with the resulting value they were willing to pay.
Then there was that weight-altering “shim” beside a truck scale at an asphalt plant in southern Arkansas years ago.
In the Springdale Subway case, which names Doctor’s Associates Inc. of Little Rock (a Florida corporation) Gotter seeks damages of more than $150,000 but less than $5 million. He also wants to make his case part of a class action that would cover three year’s worth of sandwich sales.
We shall waited with breath (perhaps bated by roast beef, ham, lettuce, tomato and onion on rosemary bread) to see if a judge given facts agrees that Gotter’s case has merit to proceed.
Meanwhile, it really does matter that we conduct business based on honest weights and measures.
Accidental porn
The 65-year-old Springdale school bus driver from Rogers who was arrested on charges of possessing child pornography on his computer contends he downloaded hundreds of such images accidentally.
The faint crash you may have detected was me toppling backwards after reading what I’d just typed.
The Benton County sheriff’s office cyber crimes unit says its deputies arrested George O’Dea Jr. as he was downloading between 30 and 50 computer files. They seized computers and you name it from his house, including a hard drive containing hundreds of sexually explicit photographs of children between the ages of about 4 and 16.
While officers said O’Dea admitted to downloading as many as 200 pornography files a day, he says he was downloading the child porn by mistake and even deleting the bad ones as they arrived. He also said it never dawned on him to contact authorities to report his downloading dilemma.
The man remains on leave as a school bus driver and last week remained in the Benton County jail, his bail set at $50,000.
Unsolicited advice for readers: Should your fingers mistakenly download hundreds of child pornography images daily, make sure to notify police of your continuing errors.
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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.
Editorial, Pages 15 on 02/19/2013