Read on for this week’s roundup of weird and wacky legal cases from around the globe!
Restaurant owners have a hard time sometimes, particularly where customers tend to eat their meals and then run off without paying. This phenomenon is known as Dine and Dash. And while it sounds like a fun way to get an adrenaline high, there are actually serious criminal charges that can flow from the act of dining and dashing. Just, generally, dining and dashing leads to charges against the person who dines and then dashes.
Not so in Georgia, where a $5 cafeteria-style Chinese meal led to a gunfight. A pair of customers engaged in an attempt at dining and dashing. When the restaurant employees noticed, they intervened and a fight ensued in the parking lot. Not to be outdone by his employees, the restaurant owner calmly walked to the restaurant, retrieved a gun, and proceeded to shoot three people.
He’s now facing aggravated assault charges. All over $5 worth of Chinese food.
Police are very effective at investigating murder. And in these types of cases, they often engage in covert surveillance and neato investigative techniques that lead to confessions or evidence that would otherwise become lost. The type of evidence that may otherwise be discarded and end up in a landfill.
Such was the case for Timothy Bass, who was a suspect in a decades-old murder of an eighteen year old girl. Police knew they could connect him to the crime if only they could get a sample of his DNA. However, they were unable to get a warrant and did not want to ask lest they tip him off to the fact that he had been identified as a suspect in the murder. So they staked out his workplace, and covertly retrieved a Coke can that he threw in the garbage.
His DNA was retrieved from the Coke can and he was subsequently charged with murder. If only he had recycled that can…
After the edition two weeks ago, where we discussed the Burger King trademark lawsuit, I stumbled across another wacky trademark case involving fast food. This one takes place in Ireland, where a burger company called Mac’s was sued by McDonald’s over its use of the “Mac” name. Apparently, according to McDonald’s, if the Irish chain expanded into other parts of the UK, it would cause confusion among customers looking for McDonald’s and stumbling upon a Mac burger instead.
Suffice it to say, the argument failed gloriously. I mean, somehow the people of Ireland were able to figure out the difference and McDonald’s restaurants have been doing just fine there for decades.
But this David versus Goliath case is interesting, as it shows that there is a lot of crazy litigation over fast food.
