Customers Cannot Expect ‘Boneless’ Wings to Be Bone Free, Ohio Supreme Court Rules

Jumbo Chicken Wings with sweet chili sauce. Samira Bouaou/Epoch Times

Customers cannot expect chicken wings marketed as “boneless” to be guaranteed bone-free, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a case filed by a man who suffered medical issues after a bone got stuck in his throat.

Michael Berkheimer filed the lawsuit after suffering “serious medical problems” from getting a chicken bone stuck in his throat while eating a boneless wing served by a restaurant.

According to court documents, Mr. Berkheimer had ordered his usual—boneless wings with parmesan garlic sauce—at an Ohio restaurant named Wings on Brookwood and cut each wing into pieces before eating.

Three days later, he went to the emergency room with a fever and complained he couldn’t keep food down. A doctor then examined his throat and found a “5cm-long chicken bone” lodged in his esophagus.

Mr. Berkheimer was told that the bone had torn his esophagus, causing a bacterial infection in his thoracic cavity and resulting in ongoing medical issues, according to court documents.

He filed a complaint against the restaurant, its supplier, and a chicken farm for “negligence, breach of warranty, adulterated food, misbranded food, and violations of the Ohio Deceptive Trade Practices Act.”

In a 4-3 ruling on Thursday, the Ohio Supreme Court stated that the label “boneless wing” was merely a description of a cooking style and not a guarantee that the wing would be free of bones.

“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,” the ruling reads.

3 Justices Dissented

Three justices in the case dissented, saying the reasonable expectation that a person has when someone sells boneless chicken wings to them “is that the chicken does not have bones in it.”

“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?” they stated.

“Of course they don’t. When they read the word ‘boneless,’ they think that it means ‘without bones,’ as do all sensible people,” the justices added.

Dissenting justices also stated that Mr. Berkheimer should have been allowed to present evidence of his negligence claim to a jury.

“Jurors likely have eaten boneless wings, some will have fed boneless wings to their children, and jurors have common sense. They will be able to determine, better than any court, what a consumer reasonably expects when ordering boneless wings,” they stated.