My favorite lawyer refers to class-action lawsuits as "stupid corporate tricks" stories. Latest case in point comes from The Capital Times of Madison, Wisc., on an appeals court ruling that will allow a class-action suit about farmed salmon sold at Wal-Mart. (As though Wal-Mart didn't have enough problems these days.)
Excuse me for not getting into the legal minutiae (that's what the link is for), but the gist is that a customer is suing Wal-Mart for allegedly misrepresenting farm-raised salmon as the more expensive wild-caught fish:
He contended that the coloring misled him and other customers into buying more fish and paying a higher price, and that the salmon should have been labeled as being artificially colored. ... [He has] sought monetary damages for what he termed an unfair trade practice. He also asked the court to prohibit Wal-Mart from "using deceptive, untruthful, misleading representations."
The original lawsuit was dismissed at the county level, but the state appeals court ruled that there was a basis for the lawsuit and sent it back to the county. Wal-Mart's attorney, asked if the company would appeal, is quoted as saying, "We are still digesting it." Honest.
This particular story and lawsuit aren't getting much play outside the region, but the problems it represents are hardly restricted to Madison or to Wal-Mart. The New York Times last spring tested salmon advertised and priced as "wild by eight New York City stores, going for as much as $29 a pound, showed that the fish at six of the eight were farm raised. Farmed salmon, available year round, sells for $5 to $12 a pound in the city."
For shoppers, said David Pasternack, the chef and an owner at Esca, a theater district fish restaurant, buying authentic wild salmon "is like a crapshoot."
OK, the salmon suit may not rank up there with possible indictments at high levels, but it's not just a fish tale. It's an example of how the compartmentalization of most media outlets translates into stories that tell only part of the picture. Salmon-fishing has become a hot environmental and political issue, and the legal problems go far beyond this consumer issue. And then there's the problem of the safety of farmed salmon vs. wild salmon. A study reported in the Washington Post said the former "contains significantly higher concentrations of PCBs, dioxin and other cancer-causing contaminants than salmon caught in the wild."
Farmed fish contain higher concentrations of contaminants than wild fish largely because they are fed meal that consists of ground-up fish tainted with the contaminants. Wild salmon eat tiny fish and aquatic organisms that are less contaminated.
And how is the consumer to tell the difference? You really can't until after you've bought it, taken it home, cooked it and tasted it. You have to depend upon the seller to properly label the fish. And if the seller doesn't, that's why class-action lawsuits exist.
Update: Apparently the issue of salmon farms adversely affecting wild salmon was a plot point in a recent episode of Boston Legal.