The Ohio Supreme Court has decided that "chicken wings advertised as 'boneless' can have bones" according to Michael Rubinkam of the Associated Press. The Ohio Supreme Court issued the ruling on Thursday, "rejecting claims by a restaurant patron who suffered serious medical complications from getting a bone stuck in his throat."
Michael Berkheimer, who was eating out in Hamilton, Ohio with his wife and friends, ordered boneless wings with Parmesan garlic sauce "when he felt a bite-size piece of meat go down the wrong way," wrote Rubinkam, who added that days later, "feverish and unable to keep food own," Berkeimer headed to the ER where "a doctor discovered a long, thin bone that had torn his esophagus and caused an infection."
Berkheimer sued the restaurant, as well as the supplier and farm that produced the chicken, but in a 4-3 ruling, the court said that "boneless wings' refers to a cooking style and that Berkheimer should've been on guard against bones since it's common knowledge that chicken have bones," effectively siding with "lower courts that had dismissed the suit," per Rubinkam.
One of the justices wrote: “A diner reading ‘boneless wings’ on a menu would no more believe that the restaurant was warranting the absence of bones in the items than believe that the items were made from chicken wings, just as a person eating ‘chicken fingers’ would know that he had not been served fingers."
A dissenting justice called this "utter jabberwocky."
"The question must be asked: Does anyone really believe that the parents in this country who feed their young children boneless wings or chicken tenders or chicken nuggets or chicken fingers expect bones to be in the chicken? Of course they don’t," wrote Justice Michael P. Donnelly. "When they read the word ‘boneless,’ they think that it means ‘without bones,’ as do all sensible people.”
