Taco Bell Stuffed Burrito
My perch here at Legal Blog Watch following hundreds of legal blogs and developments sometimes allows me to detect important trends early. In this edition of LBW Trend Watch, I reveal a new trend for you to be watching out for as you navigate the various disputes and scrapes in your life: people using food to carry out assaults on other people.
As usual, my declaration of an official trend started out with an initial, memorable observation. Specifically, I was surprised to read last week about a man who was charged with simple battery after he "delivered" (his word) a Taco Bell burrito to his 16-year-old brother-in-law's face in a way that left "burrito cheese, sauce and meat all over his clothing and face." Yes, battery by burrito.
I filed that incident away in the recesses of my brain, never thinking that assault and battery via foodstuff would become a "thing," but one week later the hits keep coming. Indeed, over the weekend, I saw reports of not one but two incidents where people were charged criminally for food attacks. On Friday, The Associated Press reported that a Canadian couple both face domestic assault charges after attacking each other with chips and dip after fighting over the last beer. When the police arrived, "they found both people covered in chips and dip."
Then, on Saturday, a Louisiana man celebrating his birthday was arrested for "simple battery of the infirmed" after he smashed a cookie cake over the head of his father. Just as with the chips and dip and the burrito incidents, the victim was "covered in the cookie cake" when the sheriff's deputy arrived on the scene.
People, please! Stop smashing each other with food and getting arrested. Our police have more important things to deal with than people on the giving and receiving ends of food attacks.
Legal Blog Watch is posted by Bruce Carton and published by Law.com, an affiliate of the Daily Business Review.
