Friday, April 18, 2014

You Can't Sue General Mills if You've Liked Them on Facebook

Via Gizmodo.

If you are injured or made ill by any of corporate food giant General Mills' myriad of products -- Betty Crocker, Bisquick, Chex, Cheerios, Go-Gurt, Green Giant, Jenos, Progresso, Hamburger Helper, Old El Paso, Pillsbury, Nature Valley, Toaster Strudel, Yoplait, Wheaties, et al. -- forget about taking the company to court.
You probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about the legal implications of liking something on Facebook, but you should. General Mills quietly updated its privacy policy so that doing things like using a coupon, entering a sweepstakes, or liking the brand means you can't sue them. Really.

The new language is clearly designed to help keep the company out of court. Last year alone, the company spent $8.5 million to settle a single lawsuit related to Yoplait packaging. Now, they just want to handle that kind of thing over email. According to The New York Times, "anyone who has received anything that could be construed as a benefit and who then has a dispute with the company over its products will have to use informal negotiation via email or go through arbitration to seek relief, according to the new terms posted on its site." This is also known as "forced arbitration."

Read the entire article here.


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