{"id":5347,"date":"2011-09-16T05:30:15","date_gmt":"2011-09-16T03:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/?p=5347"},"modified":"2015-02-14T17:36:58","modified_gmt":"2015-02-14T22:36:58","slug":"kessman-vs-whitecastle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/kessman-vs-whitecastle\/","title":{"rendered":"Kessman vs. White Castle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I imagine many of you have already seen the following vid, or a version thereof&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"width: 320px;\">Oversize Man Sues White Castle Over Seats: MyFoxNY.com<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Yup. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jdsupra.com\/post\/fileServer.aspx?fName=a12d8d5d-58f1-45ab-a3f8-a81edd45ada5.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Martin Kessman is indeed suing White Castle<\/a> over their seating, under <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ada.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">IMHO, this is a frivolous lawsuit&#8230; particularly since I doubt the ADA actually covers Mr. Kessman&#8217;s complaint. I&#8217;m no legal scholar, but if my reading of <a href=\"http:\/\/digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&amp;context=crs&amp;sei-redir=1#search=%22obesity%20ADA%22\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this Congressional report<\/a> is correct, the ADA provides only &#8220;limited&#8221; protection for obesity, as it defines &#8220;disability&#8221; as&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;&#8230;a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of the individual [such as walking or working]&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Personally, I doubt Mr. Kessman&#8217;s size limits any of his &#8220;major life activities,&#8221; including eating at White Castle &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.today.com\/id\/44523370\/ns\/today-today_people\/t\/big-guy-sues-white-castle-over-small-booths\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an activity he&#8217;s reportedly maintained for 52 years.<\/a>\u00a0At 290 pounds, he&#8217;s a big guy, but &#8211; unless he has some underlying medical condition &#8211; his size alone does not appear to constitute an impairment&#8230; particularly since, according to a White Castle spokeperson, he could have asked the store manager for a chair. If the store did not refuse to serve or accomodate him, then it&#8217;s tough to see the discrimination.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Personally, I think White Castle&#8217;s seating arrangements are ill-considered &#8211; it&#8217;s a business, after all, so it would be in its best interest to provide seating that&#8217;s roomy enough for everyone. And I can understand Mr. Kessman&#8217;s frustration with the brush-offs he received from the company brass. But seriously: since he admits he has no problems at other restaurants, the obvious solution was to tell White Castle to shove off, and take his business elsewhere. This is what I &#8211; and I think most sensible people &#8211; would do.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I imagine many of you have already seen the following vid, or a version thereof&#8230; Oversize Man Sues White Castle Over Seats: MyFoxNY.com Yup. Martin Kessman is indeed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17,24,28],"tags":[632],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5347"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8582,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5347\/revisions\/8582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}