Law soup
There’s this really good restaurant in Mansfield, Texas, by all accounts, by the name of “Our Place“. They give customers a side dish of soup “while supplies last” – its free with the meal, an extra. Well, a lawyer in Arlington, Dwain Downing is suing them because they ran out of soup the day he was there for $2.50 and legal expenses.
That’s almost as bad as someone who sued a store for piling potting soil in “his” parking space in their parking lot. These lawyers are part of the 99% of lawyers that make the other 1% of lawyers look bad.
Thanks to Pineywoods NCO for the tip.
Category: Legal
To bad he didn’t get a brain “while supplies last”
Word. LMAO!
Put a turd in his soup!!
Does he have an airplane?
Does he need crutches but can ride a bike?
Assclown went to “Law School” with Bernath, didn’t he?
I hope the restaurant tells him to FOAD, and it goes to court… and let a judge tell him the same thing!
They’re tearing up his ass on FB!
You’re famous, Deee-wain! Deal with it…
Judging from the chops on him, those scales on his stationery ought to be of the bathroom variety.
What’s the difference between a buzzard and an attorney?
An attorney can take off his wingtips.
A buzzard can take flight AND land.
Buzzard didn’t give Jonn, TSO, and MCPO new rides.
Oh, and a hot dog costume to TSO. Almost forgot.
A buzzard never had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle a defamation lawsuit.
A buzzard never lost a lawsuit against Yelp.
A buzzard isn’t prohibited from practicing law in California.
A buzzard does a better job at Photoshop.
A buzzard doesn’t say other buzzards were driven to “self murder”.
One is a non-working carrion eater with horrible breath who survivies on rotting dead flesh, despised by all mankind… the other studied law.
Yet another example of an individual in desperate need of a good asskicking. Fuck this jerkoff.
That^^^^^^
^^^yup^^^
He wants legal expenses? Oh, I can see that bill being padded sky-high.
He must not have a lot of business. Can’t imagine why, can you?
He wants to be paid for writing his own letter. Hilarious. If a doctor lances his own boil, does he bill his insurance company?
I wonder if he has a contingent fee contract with himself. Or does he still have to pay himself even if he loses the case?
I’m sure someone will provide him with a warm bowl of soup AND a hearty handshake….
As the one who tipped off Jonn, I have to say that Dwain is missing a bwain….perhaps it might be what clogged the fuel line in Dan’s pwane.
Oh wait…Dan has no bwain either.
It would not had gotten my attention except for the fact my uncle and aunt in Mansfield love Our Place.
By the way, I would like to send Dwain a can of soup and a kick in the tush.
That would be freaking hilarious. Get hundreds of people to mail ol’ Dwain a can of soup.
Anyone have his mailing address? Is the one on Bookface correct?
Packets of Ramon noodle soup. Easy and cheap to mail.
I see that the cafe is offering 10% discounts to customers who bring in a can of soup to donate to charity. Classy way of telling the lawyer to GFY…
de minimis non curat lex – Literally, the law does not concern itself with trifles; expression of the rule that the law will not remedy an injury that is minimal.
Mr. Downing has no doubt heard this maxim; evidently he did not think about it before writing his silly letter.
Is it possible that this is a publicity stunt? If so, it is highly effective in circulating the names.
How unfortunate that 99% of the lawyers make ALL of them look bad.
In tribute to the great Madeleine Kahn:
Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Dwain
Dwain who?
Dwain the bathtub, I’m dwowning…
In California, if a prison inmate wants to take a paralegal course to learn to sue, they can. It’s cheap too, with tuition help available.
Then they can sue for dire and drastic things like broken cookies, or bad chili.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1454&dat=19951023&id=z_ZOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=FhUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5358,3248227&hl=en
At first I was with the many people who think the lawyer is a jerk.
Another article on the subject brings more light to the situation:
“A variety of specials are offered every day for $7.95, with an entree, two sides, rolls and “a cup of our homemade soup.” The “while supplies last” line does not appear on the specials section of the online menu.
(source: http://www.star-telegram.com/living/food-drink/article73421632.html )
Here’s the link to the menu: http://www.ourplacerestaurants.com/assets/ourplacemenu_103014.pdf
Page 8 is the specials menu and it does not say “while supplies last” on the offer of soup.
Without seeing the actual printed menu, it is hard to say whether the lawyer is completely right, but from the online presence of the restaurant, he is.
The restaurant made an offer. The patron accepted it. Fill the offer or compensate the patron.
I am much less sympathetic to the restaurant and more sympathetic to the lawyer now.
(I also think the owner’s response of “we could have settled this with a phone call” is ridiculous. The guy was in his place. He asked the server and was denied. He spoke with the manager and was denied. If those people can’t act in the best interests of customer service and making a customer happy, then the owner is at least as much of a jerk as the lawyer in that he sent castrated employees out there to do his dirty work.)
There is no art of customer service anymore in this world. At the very least, the server or the manager should have taken the guy’s name and had the manager call him – not the other way around.
Hope you accidentally left off the /sarc tag.
Not that it matters but one of the links above shows the menu and the while it lasts words.
Sorry sj, I am not being sarcastic.
The restaurant has the responsibility to make sure they live up to the offer. Even the disclaimer “while it lasts” may not be enough because in the states I have lived in, if you are offering a “special,” you must have on hand quantities to fill the reasonable expectation of the length of the offer.
The restaurant didn’t. It seems their policy is to offer the free soup to get people in the door and then sayd “sorry, we’re out of soup!”
(All the while laughing gleefully at their increased profits.)
Does this take a lawsuit? I dunno. But it seems that the restaurant and the owner think they can break the law without consequence.
The real solution should be to change the policy and go on from there.
Dude. You usually write good stuff. Put down the “Bernath Book of Ambulance Chasing” and go have a sarsaparilla. BTW, in the video at 1:02 it shows the menu with the words.
I think the restaurant ought to be sued for serving Heinz products and further enriching John F’ing Kerry.
I’m going to go have a scotch after reading this Bernathian logic.
sj,
There is no “Bernathian logic” here at all.
There is the law.
The states in which I have worked all have limitations as to what “supplies limited” means. If you are putting something on sale (which this is) you either have to state the number of items you have on hand, or you have to have enough product on hand to satisfy the reasonable expectations to the number of customers.
In other words, you might get slammed by huge numbers of customers because you put an item on sale and run out, but if that happens all the time, it is a problem under the law.
The restaurant advertises this special. At 11:05 each day they allegedly run out of soup which you can only find out by being in the restaurant itself.
So now you have come from work for a lunch looking at the special and they don’t have the soup but they have you in the restaurant. (Which is what they want.) You aren’t going elsewhere at that point in time.
They may have (emphasis on “may”) have enticed you into the restaurant with something they don’t have the ability to fulfill the majority of requests.
Their profits go up because 1) they aren’t having to include the soup and 2) they have you in the restaurant buying meals.
Do I think the lawyer should get “legal fees?” No.
Should the restaurant change its policy? Probably, as what they are doing may be against the law.
Out of respect for your past postings, I’ll just say nothing.
The lawyer may very well be within his legal rights. However… Filing a lawsuit for $2.50 paints him as a major league asshole. And as often happens, well meaning supporters of the aforementioned asshole get to share the brush.
I want to address two points of yours, gitarcarver:
1) Where do you get that they run out of soup “at 11:05 each day”??
My aunt has made frequent visits to this place three miles from her house and they still have soup after 11:05, not always, but often. My uncle will also confirm that.
2) Since when does the menu that shows on the website versus the one shown on hard copy in the restaurant and in the video are one and the same?? Does it say that in law? Not a point to argue over, but food for thought, so to speak.
My final thought is this: My wife and I have just sent an accounting of an estate in which she was the executrix for. It took her two hours to write the first copy, three more hours for me to review it and correct it before it was sent. In the time it took Dwain to write his letter, which was probably about fifteen minutes, he demands a charge for $ 250.00. That equates to $1000 per hour. So, should I send a bill to my aunt’s lawyer for $ 5,000 for our time? Certainly not. But I agree with the stupidity here of the lawyer.
Sort of how I respectfully disagree with your two points.
Again, so to speak, just some food for thought.
So if my local car dealer is offering 2016 Corvettes at an incredibly low price, they should keep it up until everyone who wants one at that price has one? Even if it’s in 2018?
Can’t sell what you don’t have anymore regardless of your best guess of demand.
That’s funny that you bring up car dealer and ads.
Car dealers were doing exactly what you say in Maryland. They were advertising cars of which they may only have one and then saying “we don’t have any more, but would you like to look at this model?”
The State of Maryland slapped the car dealers hard on that – including fines.
The “best guess of demand” is reasonable, but if you are offering a product for sale at a special price and run out of that product every day, you may not be making a “best guess of demand.” Furthermore, being that it is the guy’s business to know how much soup he makes daily and when it runs out, he may be in trouble if the soup is “running out” all the time, or even the majority of the time. When the soup runs out is an issue as well. If he is running out a 2:55 PM before the restaurant closes, he’s probably okay. If he runs out at 11:05 AM every day, he may be in trouble.
Under your thinking, the restaurant could make a “cup o’ noodles” and then say,. “we’re out of soup.” That’s deceptive and illegal in the states in which I worked.
To me, this is a case where the lawyer and the restaurant could have handled this better.
All I am saying is that while at first glance it seems like the lawyer is a jerk, there really needs to be more information known.
At this point in time, the lawyer is not totally incorrect in his point on having soup on hand.
(His demand for legal fees is another matter as he wouldn’t get them in most small claims courts.)
Yep. I understand your reasoning and how this used everywhere to bring in customers. However, not getting a FREE cup of soup doesn’t warrant a lawsuit or all of the crop this guy is stirring up.
He can hit up a homeless shelter’s soup kitchen if he’s that hard up for free soup.
What the lawyer is apparently upset about is what he sees as bait-and-switch marketing on the part of the restaurant. In this case, the soup wasn’t free, it was included with the cost of the rest of the meal. Sort of like going in to buy a new car, and not being able to drive it home because the dealer said he ran out of tires.
Even if just the soup had been offered, the element of bait-and-switch is not dependant on whether something is free or discounted. It depends on somebody knowingly offering something without it being available.
Things seem to have gone off the rails at a couple of levels with this: in the first place, the server could have told the lawyer there was no soup when he placed the order, and the lawyer had the option of refusing the order when it was served without the soup.
The resturant should send him a letter back with one sentence.
We have no soup for you “Quod Futue Te Ipsum Est Quid”
If an attorney f__s himself, who pays for his pimp daddy service? Could he take himself to court if he did not pay his pimp fee? If he is his own customer, who does he pay?
Starting today, every time I see the word “special” in any business, if they tell me they have run out but have no “as long as supplies last” sign,; it’s off to the court house I go. That’ll teach those fools to offer a special and not have it available five minutes before closing. It’s justice dammit! This is where Lars comes in with the philosophical waxing.
Better yet, I think it wise to open a restaurant and name it…..”While Supplies Last”. Those 99%ers will have to go elsewhere for legal appetizers.
Wanna bet that ole Dwain and Bernasty have talked about a class action suit? Birds (buzzards) of a feather etc.
Still shaking my head ruefully that one of our brethren, that I respected, has gone Bernathian on this.
Didn’t Daniel A. Bernath the Fred Phelps Clone always try to extort $600 saying he WOULDN’T sue if he got it?
WTF? I’m assuming he was having a slow day at the office, no ambulances to chase, nobody slipping and falling at the grocery store, etcetera, so he decided to extort some cash from a local restaurant in a Bernathian fashion. FUCK HIM and his retarded hound dog, too!
The restaurant should follow the example of the Cleveland Browns when some lawyer sent them a letter saying he was going to sue them for being hit by a paper airplane thrown by a fan.
The Browns returned the letter back to the lawyer, along with a note saying
“I feel that you should be aware that some a**hole is signing your name to stupid letters.”.
I would love to see the case go to court.
Many years ago, I was sitting in a courtroom on Maryland’s Eastern Shore when a traffic case was called. It was an appeal of a guilty for a speeding ticket that a teenager rec’d in Ocean City. Anyway, the atty and the appellant have the same name. The judge asks if they are related. The atty says yes, they’re father and son. Judge asks where they live. Daddy answers, “Towson.” Judge glares at Daddy and tells him in no uncertain terms that he’s a horse’s ass for appealing the ticket and to get out of his courtroom and back over the bridge to wherever it is he came from.
Some people take themselves far too seriously.
“Free” soup? Horse hockey. The cost of the “free soup” is included in the prices, particularly the items where a cup of soup is included without mentioning “while supplies last”.
The soup is not an “extra” unless it says it is an extra, just as the meat loaf is not an extra in the meat loaf special. It says “All specials include a cup of our homemade soup.” Pretty clear. If the owner wants to place conditions on it, then he needs to include “while supplies last”, as he did in other places.
On the other hand, the lawyer had the chance to back out of the “contract” when the waiter informed him that no soup was available. Instead, he chose to knowingly accept a modified “contract”. He has no case.
I am surprised this turd is not employed by the VA’s General and Regional Counsel. Especially VISN 19.
Sounds par for the course.
This clown has the ethical and moral backbone (or lack thereof) to fit in nicely.
Oh, and I forgot professional competence and integrity.
https://m.facebook.com/pages/Our-Place-Restaurant-Mansfield-TX/222395274934?fref=ts
Followup story
http://www.wfaa.com/news/lawyer-regrets-soup-lawsuit-threat/153332276
The lawsuit will not happen, but he claims Our Place escalated the issue and cyberbullies are threatening him.
Hmm….makes me wonder if he hangs around someone else we know in the area….Dennis Chevalier.
Dwain is an asshat.
Whats next, is he gonna claim that “cyber bullies” are trying to coerce him into “self-murder”? That’s as stupid as taking off in a plane without sufficient fuel and suing the plane’s manufacturer when you wreck!!
They’re probably trying to coerce him into a salad next time.
He was on the local news last night over this cup of soup.
Now he’s famous! Isn’t that what he really wanted???