A Taxonomy of Obesity Litigation

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Resident Fellow Theodore Frank
Resident Fellow Theodore Frank

Excerpt

The plaintiffs’ bar and media have claimed early “success” in obesity and lifestyle litigation; however, several fundamentally different kinds of lawsuits are being grouped under one “obesity litigation” umbrella, and each one has different policy implications for obesity and for the legal system. A closer look shows that the plaintiffs’ successes have been thin gruel and that the obesity litigation to date has been much more successful in transferring wealth to attorneys than in advancing legitimate public policy concerns.

Ted Frank is a resident fellow and the director of the Liability Project at AEI.

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About the Author

 

Ted
Frank
  • Ted Frank is a former resident fellow at AEI. He specialized in product liability, class actions, and civil procedure while at AEI. Before joining AEI, Mr. Frank was a litigator from 1995 to 2005 and clerked for the Honorable Frank H. Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Frank has written for law reviews, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and The American Spectator and has testified before Congress multiple times on legal issues. He writes for the award-winning legal blogs PointOfLaw.com and Overlawyered, and the Wall Street Journal has called him a "leading tort-reform advocate."  Mr. Frank was recently elected to membership in the American Law Institute.

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