California Is At It Again
This Blog Posting was actually mostly written last
year. I have unsuccessfully tried to get an update to all of this Foolishness
but I can’t find updated information. However, based on how slow our legal
system oozes it way through our lives, I feel fairly certain that this
Craziness is still oozing.
Coffee may be bad for you:
- A Los Angeles Superior Court ruled against Starbucks and 90 Other Cafes and Gas Stations, penalizing them because they couldn’t definitively prove that coffee doesn’t cause cancer.>How does one prove a negative? Someone accuses you of being a bad person. You counter that you are not a bad person. They counter your counter by saying, “Prove it”.
- In addition to slapping a cancer warning on each cup of coffee they will sell in the future, the companies may have to pay millions in civil penalties and lawsuit settlements.
- At issue is a chemical called Acrylamide, which is created when coffee beans are roasted.
- It’s also common in other foods, including bread, cookies, cereals, potato chips and French fries.>Why aren’t these other evil products being attacked by California?
- Under California’s 1986 Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, better known as Proposition 65, Acrylamide is listed as a likely human carcinogen.
- Notice Prop 65 does not say Acrylamide is a Human Carcinogen but only a likely Human Carcinogen and that’s all that is needed to extract ungodly sums of money from the victims of Our Court System and the State of California.
- California’s cancer list relies heavily on junk science and with Acrylamide the evidence is questionable at best.
- These tentative concerns derive mainly from studies that examined its effects on lab animals, not humans.
- The American Cancer Society says the doses of Acrylamide given to rats and mice have been as much as 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the levels people might be exposed to in foods and for humans “there are currently no cancer types for which there is a clearly increased risk related to Acrylamide”.
- The evidence is so scant that even the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer admitted in 2016 that there was “no conclusive evidence for a carcinogenic effect of drinking coffee” and its review of more than 1,000 studies turned up evidence that coffee may actually reduce the risk of some types of cancer.
- The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer is the same alarmist outfit that thinks everything from red meat to working the night shift causes cancer.
- However feeble the evidence, Proposition 65 encourages trial lawyers and their front groups to sue on behalf of the state by offering them a cut of the civil penalties.
- Last year these types of cases yielded $25.6 million in settlements, and more than three-fourths of that sum went to the lawyers.
- A very famous (infamous?) trial lawyer brought the case against Starbucks and 90 other cafes and gas stations.
- He is working on behalf of something called the Council for Education and Research on Toxics.
- This is the same “nonprofit” and attorney also sued McDonald's and Burger King over Acrylamide in 2002.
- The Starbucks shakedown was easy in part because under Proposition 65 the co-defendants bore the burden of proof.
- The 7-Eleven chain decided to settle, paying $900,000.
- For the remaining defendants, the trial lawyer is now seeking civil penalties as high as $2,500 per person for each “exposure” since 2002.
- This will add up to a huge sum of money in a state with roughly 40 million residents.
This ought to be
that point where the judge says to the Trial Lawyer some or all of the
following...
Counselor, the amount
of money you are asking for is an unmitigated waste of the court’s time! Do you
understand how much money $2,500 times every cup of coffee sold by these
California businesses in the last 16 years is? This court does not even know
how that final sum would be determined! If you not nuts, you are certainly
stupid! Get the hell out of my courtroom!
***************
Did you hear it? I did.
I heard the other shoe drop.
The state of
California is penalizing businesses because they couldn’t definitively prove
that coffee doesn't cause cancer.
Below are the guts
of one of many articles that can be found that not only say coffee is good
for us but we ought to drink many cups a day to increase our chances of
living a healthier life.
(CNN)…
Yes, go ahead and grab that cup of coffee, or two, or more. New
research suggests that doing so may
improve your health and help you live longer...
- In a new observational study involving close to 20,000 individuals, people who consumed at least four cups of coffee daily had a 64% lower risk of early death compared to those who never or rarely consumed coffee.
- The reduction in risk was more significant once people reached the age of 45, suggesting that it may be even more beneficial to consume coffee as we get older.
- These findings echo the recent results of another large observational study, which found that coffee drinkers appear to live longer, regardless of whether they consume regular or decaf coffee.
- Coffee has also been shown to reduce the risk of many diseases, including Type 2 Diabetes, Liver Disease, Colorectal Cancer, Alzheimer's and Skin Cancer.
- In recent years it has come to light that Coffee is loaded with antiioxidents. Many are naturally occurring antioxidants found in the coffee bean, while others are created during the roasting process. It's these compounds that science links with positive effects in reducing the risk of several diseases.
- Some of the compounds commonly found in coffee "have been related to Better Insulin Sensitivity, Better Liver Function and Reduced Chronic Inflamation", said V. Wendy Setiawan an associate professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the lead author of one of the recent studies on coffee consumption and longevity.
***************
Our courts are out of control. Are we on the verge of having
a lawyer contend in court something along these lines?...
Your honor, everyone on that plane was killed in that horrible
crash. My client was not on that plane but he could have been and, if he had
been, he would have been killed with all the rest of the passengers that were
killed. If he had been killed, his wife would be a widow and his 6 children
would be fatherless through no fault of his or their own. The sadness they
would have experienced is hard to imagine.
I am therefore compelled to ask this court for more money
than $2,500 times every cup of coffee sold by those California businesses in
the last 16 years discussed in Fella’s silly blog posting.
Would I kid u?
Smartfella
Lagniappe: This
comes from a fed up Californian on April 16, 2018…
“Regarding your editorial “Attack of
the Killer Cappuccino” (March 31): I
intend to bring a class-action lawsuit against the Council for Education and
Research on Toxics citing the scientific fact that stress causes cancer. The
council is causing me severe, debilitating anxiety with its cancer warning
about coffee. Judge Elihu Berle’s decision makes me extremely stressed out as
well, so he (they, or she, to use the correct gender pronoun since I don’t want
to be arrested for using the incorrect gender pronoun in California) must be
sued also. Anybody with me? After all, the council can’t prove that it is not
responsible for causing cancer.”
