MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama residents who've been eating too much fried chicken or too many loaded burgers at their favorite restaurants may be out of luck if they want to file lawsuits against the businesses for making them fat.
The Alabama House is set to debate a bill Tuesday that would prohibit lawsuits against restaurants, grocery stores or other businesses claiming that eating certain food caused a weight gain.
The bill, called the "Common Sense Consumption Act" will be on the agenda in the Alabama House as lawmakers return for the 21st day of the 2011 session after a difficult weekend that saw most of them comforting citizens back home after tornadoes devastated the state last week, killing 250 people. The House returns at 1 p.m. and the Senate comes into session at 3 p.m.
Gov. Robert Bentley will give a televised speech at 6 p.m. to a joint session of the House and Senate in the Old House Chamber at the Alabama Capitol concerning efforts to recover from the tornadoes.
The sponsor of the bill to stop lawsuits over weight gain, Republican state Rep. Mike Jones of Andalusia, said the bill is aimed at protecting small restaurants that could be harmed financially by such a lawsuit.
"Ma and pa restaurants have a 4 percent profit margin or less," Jones said. He said having to fight such a lawsuit could force a small restaurant to go out of business.
"We're saying you can't sue if you ate the food for a couple of months and gained weight," Jones said.
Jones said his bill doesn't prevent people from filing lawsuits if they feel restaurants made false claims about the food, such as saying a certain menu item contained 400 calories when it actually had 1,000 calories.
The president of the Alabama Restaurant Association, Larry Fidel, said up to now there have been no such lawsuits filed in Alabama, but there have been suits against restaurants in other states.
Fidel said these types of lawsuits hurt businesses even when they are eventually thrown out of court.
"Until you show that it's a frivolous lawsuit you still have to defend it," Fidel said.
