Judge Says Raisinets, Not Damages, Are Option for Popcorn Plaintiff
Fat and calories aren’t the only hidden risks of movie theater popcorn. The unpopped kernels also post dental dangers, but that doesn’t mean the cinema has to pay for broken teeth, a Manhattan judge has ruled.
Judge Matthew Cooper dismissed the suit by an insurance broker who sought more than $1,000 in dental costs from an AMC theater after he broke his tooth while munching popcorn, the New Jersey Law Journal reports.
Plaintiff Steve Kaplan must lose, Cooper wrote, because of the reasonable expectation doctrine, which holds that a plaintiff can’t recover for a “reasonably anticipated” object in food. “Anyone who has ever made fresh popcorn … soon learns the bitter truth that the final product is almost always marred by the presence of unpopped, partially popped or burnt kernels,” Cooper said in his Sept. 19 opinion.
“Until such time as the same bio-engineers who brought us seedless watermelon are able to develop a new strain of popping corn where every kernel is guaranteed to pop, we will just have to accept partially popped popcorn as part and parcel of the popcorn popping process,” he said in an alliterative flourish.
Cooper advised movie patrons to try a different snack, “like those giant-sized boxes of Raisinets or Milk Duds,” then thought better of it. “But then again, aren’t Milk Duds known to pull out your fillings?”
