Franklin County Times

A lot of my inspiration for what I write in my column each week comes from things I read about on the Internet.

Some things never cease to amaze me, like the pure greed of the human population.

I found out this week that a California mom was awarded over $3 million last Friday in a lawsuit she filed in 2011 against Ferrero, the makers of the wonderfully delicious hazelnut spread Nutella.

Did this woman sue the company because she found a bug inside the jar? No.

Did she sue them because it contained small parts that her child choked on? No.

This woman chose to sue this company because Nutella isn’t healthy.

I thought this had to be a joke when I first heard about it because who in their right mind would sue a company for making an unhealthy food?

If that’s the case, there aren’t many companies these days that are safe.

According to the court documents, this woman sued the company because their advertisements for Nutella made the product seem like it was a healthy addition to your diet, so she started feeding it to her four-year-old child.

She was then “shocked” to discover how much sugar and trans fat the product contained and sued the company for being misleading.

First of all, why in the world could this woman not use good old common sense and deduce that a chocolatey hazelnut spread probably wasn’t akin to feeding her kid a banana?

Just because the woman in the TV commercial spread it on a whole wheat waffle doesn’t mean it has the same nutritional value as fruits and vegetables.

Secondly, if common sense failed (and obviously in her case this is no question), why couldn’t she use her eyes to read the label and see what’s in the spread before she fed it to her kid?

Wouldn’t that be the responsible thing to do?

If she is so concerned about her child’s diet, wouldn’t she want to double check that what she was eating was good for her instead of relying on the marketing of an Italian company?

And lastly, when she found out that it wasn’t all that healthy, why was her next response to sue the company?

I’ll tell you why — because she saw dollar signs. And I’m sure she didn’t get there alone.

Whatever lawyer she spoke to probably saw dollar signs and publicity to boot. Thus we wind up with the woman receiving a $3 million settlement.

This dumb lawsuit and the ridiculous outcome are just the end results of much bigger problems we face today.

People are much too eager to find the easy way out. They’d rather get a handout than work for what they have.

They’d rather blame someone else than take responsibility for their own actions.

They are driven by greed and entitlement, and if you ask me, it has gotten downright sickening.

In the end, you are always going to have greedy people looking for a way to get ahead.

But we also have a problem in America of having enablers — people who make it easy for the greedy and the self-absorbed to have their way.

Instead of having a judge who would grant this woman’s ridiculous request for $3 million because her kid ate something that’s about the same as any candy bar, I wish she would have faced a judge that said, “Look honey, if you can’t use your brain to determine this product isn’t something you want to feed your child every day, then you have bigger problems you need to deal with.”

Where’s the tough love?

Where are all the people who have a backbone and can stand up to the people who are making it to where you can barely breathe anymore without getting sued for something?

Until those kinds of people step forward, I don’t think this problem is ever going to get any better.