Saw a couple of lawsuits in the news that were worth noting.

The first is that a woman is suing the makers of Pirate's Booty due to some incorrect information on its packaging, which indicated lower calorie and fat amounts per serving than were true. She's asking for a modest sum for the trouble this has caused her.

$50 million.

Now I'm not one to jump on the frivilous lawsuit bandwagon. Heck, I thought the woman with the McDonalds coffee made some sense, given the volcanic temperatures at which that Mickey D's served its java. This, however, is ridiculous, given one simple question.

If you're on a diet, why are you eating snack food?

I know, it's supposed to be good for you snack food, but all things being equal it's still a snack food. If this woman has such a need to snack, perhaps she needs counseling, not a puffed corn and wheat munchable.

Of course, I'm making a list of companies should she win.

The other lawsuit comes from the family of Charles Bishop, the teen who flew a Cessna into a Tampa high rise in some sort of suicidal pro-Taliban gesture whose futility level is just somewhere below the 2002 Detroit Tigers.

Anyway, the family is suing Hoffman-La Roche, the makers of Accutane, a drug for treating severe acne. The family contends that the drug causes depression and "spontaneous suicide," and that they know it. The company points out that they've included depression warnings on their labeling since 1985, and that there's no proven link between suicide, depression, and the drug.

I always get a little nervous about the intersection of science and law, given that it's a pretty simple trick to confuse a jury (or a judge, for that matter) with research. Just look at the studies funded by the Tobacco Institute, which do everything but bring back the white coated GP claiming that Chesterfields soothe your throat. But in this case, it seems like the family's reaching.

Why? Because a "spontaneous suicide" would probably not require the theft of an aircraft and a note expressing support of al-Qaeda. Perhaps spontaneous has some term of art meaning in these circumstances, but I would tend to think that playing in traffic or enjoying some Ny Quil and vodka would do the trick. Even if he wanted to take a plane, wouldn't plowing into the ocean be more of a spontaneous reaction? Or just crashing on purpose on any old stretch of ground?

My $.02 crackpot theory is that young Mr. Bishop was having issues, but not those caused by Accutane. It may be that another Hoffman-La Roche product would have helped more.

The police also noted that they didn't find any Accutane in Bishop's blood, but also noted they didn't recover enough blood to make a full confirmation. That's perhaps more than I wanted to know.