Next Gen News

In the US idea of little guy versus corporate giant, courts of law play a core role, offering a platform for political crusade

A US consumer group is suing McDonald's over its Happy Meals. False advertising, you say? "These don't make me happy! They make me full but only for a short time, and full of self-hate!" No, it's for the toys they give away. If only the Guardian had the financial muscle and entrepreneurial spirit to give away free Shreks and Pusses in Boots, you'd be able to see how incomprehensibly crap they are. California has already passed a law against offering free toys with any meal that doesn't reach a nutritional standard, in recognition of just how dense and suggestible is your average child diner.

It's interesting to look at the language used in this lawsuit, brought by the Center for Science in the Public Interest: "McDonald's is the stranger in the playground handing out candy to children. It's a creepy and predatory practice that warrants an injunction. McDonald's marketing has the effect of conscripting America's children into an unpaid drone army of word-of-mouth marketers, causing them to nag their parents to bring them to McDonald's." What a subtle audacity, calling Ronald McDonald a paedophile. In a lawsuit. I thought you were only allowed to say that on Facebook.

More remarkable is the radicalism underpinning this: the idea that large corporations should approach customers in a responsible way, thinking not only of profit but of the nutritional needs of a family, as well as its budget and interior dynamics.

In Britain, when we talk about the need for corporate responsibility we are referring to major transgressions against humankind: toxic spillage, sweat shops in Bangladesh, carbon footprints. In America there is provision under law for enforcing â€" or at least demanding â€" not just a duty of care not to kill anybody but the kind of responsibility you might ask from a reasonable adult. Please don't just profiteer. Also think of the tubby, plastic-ridden society you create.

This sounds like a good thing, doesn't it? And yet the landscape it creates is not necessarily one we'd emulate. Take, as an example, the drinks industry's response to foetal alcohol syndrome. In the 1970s, when alcohol was first identified as a hazard to a foetus, the industry naturally rejected it wholesale (mainly on the basis that pregnant women had been drinking for centuries). By 1988 the industry had willingly submitted to warning signs on every bottle â€" not "don't drink too much", but a red line through a pregnant woman, effectively "don't drink at all, you pregger".

The spur to this was a case brought against Jim Beam, on behalf of a child with foetal alcohol syndrome, the year before. (James A Beam actually escaped liability when the mood of the court turned against the mother, but it was a tense time for the drinks industry; the story is told in Janet Golden's book Message in a Bottle.)

Never minding the gender politics of all this â€" and Golden points to strongly racist imagery and rhetoric in the foetal alcohol syndrome debate â€" just look at the route. That case against the industry was the hinge moment, just as it was in the smoking debate, which was bitterly fought in class actions against Big Tobacco first, then passed through state law like a slippery pig.

The timing isn't always exact. A class action might be inspired by one in a single state, as is apparently the case in the People v Badly Made Shrek Toy.

But there is certainly an alternative political landscape in America, where arguments are made that are much more radical than anything you hear from mainstream politicians. Barack Obama sounds great, but he does not sound like a Marxist. You cannot imagine him accusing a fast-food giant of "conscripting" a child. The narrative is rarely a straightforward David v Goliath, where a little guy sets his all against a huge company and wins. That does sometimes happen, but there's baggage: a trail of on-the-hop law-making that can make the individual weaker even though it was formulated in response to an individual's case against a faceless corporation.

Having said all that, there is another reason why I can't see anyone bringing a case against McDonald's in Britain: if you were going to bring a class action against plastic tat, you would definitely start with CBeebies magazine.

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