I agree with the dissent in this case. What kind of Alice in wonderland bullshit are we living in where when you say boneless, you actually mean "THERE MAY BE BONES OVER AN INCH LONG IN THEM!"??

Words have meaning. It really shows how much these fuckers are cutting corners. If anything it's negligence for allowing a product such as this to reach the customer, get lodged in his throat, slice open his esophagus, get infected, and require two surgeries.

If the boneless wings had glass in them, would they be held negligent?

Here's the bit of dissent from the article.

"Dissenting Justices argued that a jury should have been allowed to determine whether the restaurant and suppliers were negligent, and called Deters' reasoning “utter jabberwocky.”

“When they read the word ‘boneless,’ they think that it means ‘without bones,’ as do all sensible people,” wrote Justice Michael P. Donnelly in dissent."

I take this as a positive. The Ohio Supreme Court just protected trans rights, when it applies to nuggets.

Not surprised this happened in Ohio

Funny headline aside, semantics and trying to understand expected meanings of words and phrases is fucky and makes for an interesting case. Per the article the court decision was only 4-3 (i.e., close), and the dissent seemed -- as a person who admittedly is not well-versed in the language normally used by Ohio's Supreme Court -- to be pretty strongly opinionated.

From the snippets in the article I find it pretty easy to sympathize with both sides of the argument!

edit: the full text is available here (the original unarchived source is being hammered by curious people) - you can download the file to read it in full-res

The question seems to be: "did the restaurant exercise reasonable duty of care". There is a lot more to the case than the fun-but-sensationalized headline and even article.

Milton: We use only the finest baby frogs, dew picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope and lovingly frosted with glucose.

Praline: That's as maybe, it's still a frog.

Milton: What else?

Praline: Well don't you even take the bones out?

Milton: If we took the bones out it wouldn't be crunchy would it?

Praline: Superintendent Parrot ate one of those.

Parrot: Excuse me a moment. (exits hurriedly)

Milton: It says 'crunchy frog' quite clearly.

Praline: Well, the superintendent thought it was an almond whirl. People won't expect there to be a frog in there. They're bound to think it's some form of mock frog.

Milton: (insulted) Mock frog? We use no artificial preservatives or additives of any kind!

Praline: Nevertheless, I must warn you that in future you should delete the words 'crunchy frog', and replace them with the legend 'crunchy raw unboned real dead frog', if you want to avoid prosecution.

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Granted I've never been injured, but I've gotten small pieces of bone shards several times throughout my life from shredded chicken type stuff.

I dunno if they refused to pay medical bills because that'd be fucked.

But if you kill a creature, cook and debone it, yeah, occasionally a bit of bone will make it through.

You can still call it boneless, because you knew you were buying meat from a creature that normally has bones and an effort has been made to remove said bones.

I hate to say I side with the Ohio Supreme Court but I think I do.

All the fast food workers in Ohio should start making sure that they they get some good bones in there every time they go for fast food chicken.

Ok as someone not from the states, wtf are boneless chicken wings?

Ok so like an Ohio Boneless Wing is just a regular wing, with the bone in?

it's joever.

A guy ate boneless wings and got a bone stuck in his throat leading to multiple surgeries so he sued. But he didn't notice when it happened?

The longer I think about this the more I agree with the decision. It sounds dumb, there shouldn't be bones, but if you're chopping up a chicken breast with the rib bones still attached, I could see how a bone could accidentally make its way into a nugget. So I can understand what they mean by saying it's a cooking style.