Man Offered $150k for Exploding Jar of Fruit

Darryl Alexander of Southfield, Mi. claims that a lid from an exploding jar of Del Monte fruit knocked him unconscious. Since this is an unacceptable way to get one of your 2-4 recommended daily servings, he decided to sue Del Monte and Kroger where he bought the explosive jar. Both companies deny any responsibility but have offered the sore jawed Alexander $150k to settle the suit. "It happened so fast. I just had no time to react. ... I staggered, lost consciousness and fell to the floor. I eventually screamed for my wife," he said.

Good thing it was only fruit...

[BC_R3]

Could you imagine the danger had it been a jar of pickles or God forbid contain red 40!

Shopping anyone?

[King_Leonidas]

Anyone else think it's time to stock up on Del Monte and hope it somehow hurts you. I'll even take a minor injury i think that's worth at least 50,000.

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[rainmouse]

Its because of men like this that future jars of fruit may contain the warning '' please do not try to forcibly remove the lid with a screw driver while holding this jar next to your eyeball ''.

Trying to prevent a McDonald's coffee job...

[Psychofreak]

This is trying to cover medical and time off work, plus a little, in an effort to prevent a repeat of the McDonald's coffee debacle. The man can prove that he was injured, and the jar contributed to his injuries. Del Monte and Kroger are just trying to prevent a PR nightmare with a relatively small (for the companies involved) sum of cash.

Phil

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[Stregano]

I think they should have fought it. Yes, sometimes it sucks when lawsuits come and people can't afford to go to court with it, sometimes, like this time, the person is so retarded to where they deserve nothing, and it shows the retards that you can't up and sue for everything. If they wanted to, there would be no way he could even begin to keep up with court costs against Kroger. All it would take is seeing if the bottle actually had opening directions or "do not shove bottle in your eyeball hole" precau

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[vlm]

Claiming permanent vision damage also. I'm not sure how much I'd pay to avoid permanent vision problems, but probably more than $150K.

Bloody idiot.

[srodden]

Man heats a bottle, hits it with a hammer then blames someone else? Why did the judge not say "sod off, you leech"? Modern litigation-crazy America, this is why we hate you :-(

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[operagost]

He hit it with the handle of a screwdriver. Regardless, I wouldn't recommend hitting a jar with anything. Tapping, maybe.

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[srodden]

My point exactly. He tried to open the bottle in a manner other than prescibed by the manufacturer and when it went wrong he's blamed someone else.

If I trip over when I'm walking down the street due to an uneven pavement, I pick myself up and keep on walking. I don't immediately start looking for someone to sue!

If someone idiot had left a cable draped across the walkway then that's a different story.

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[MrQuacker]

That's why you're broke and this idiot is depositing $150k in his bank ;P

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[srodden]

Sad but true.

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[Dthief]

RTFA, the lawyers are telling him not to take it. so he is not depositing anything unless he wins the suit (which sadly, he probably will)

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[russ1337]

Man heats a bottle, hits it with a hammer then blames someone else? Why did the judge not say "sod off, you leech"?

Modern litigation-crazy America, this is why we hate you :-(

This used to be the worst thing about America. Now it's probably the least worst thing.

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[interkin3tic]

That's not what happened, judging from TFA. He ran it under warm water, a common technique to open stuck jars, the goal being to heat up the lid to make it expand a little and not be so tight (or maybe heat up the interior of the jar to increase the pressure, making the lid easier to take off). He hit the lid with the rubber end of a screwdriver, another common remedy (I guess the idea is to break the seal on the lid and allow the inside of the jar to equalize with the outside). I've done the same thing

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[srodden]

And this is exactly why I'm not a federal judge! The point about bacterial infection/pressure is a good one that I had not considered.

I actually understood what he'd done, even if my words seemed more critical.

Still, regardless of what's a "common remedy", I would not award damages to someone who'd used a method other than prescribed to open a can who had then suffered in some way as a result.

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[krazytekn0]

Just a quick note: does a jar of del monte fruit actually have opening instructions? If not how can there be a prescribed manner of opening? I would say the prescribed manner in such a case would be any manner used by any non-trivial number of people. Such as running warm water over it and tapping the edge of the lid (which a LOT of people do to open stuck jars).

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[srodden]

I have no idea. I've never bought del Monte fruit.
But I have seen packets of food that have a warning label that says "Caution: Contents will be hot after heating" and on a packet of peanuts, "Caution: Contains Nuts".

Infection!

[GooberToo]

Actually, its well known some types of food contaminations can create gases within its storage vessel. Cans are well known to bloat and distort in shape. If its a glass container it can burst or "explode" fairly forcefully since it can't give until critical failure. Handling such a container is likely to encourage structural failure if its already near the breaking point.

If the guy is simply not attempting to commit fraud with his claim, its very likely the food was contaminated with something. If so, its p

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[lul_wat]

I once had a container of yoghurt swell up after leaving it in the fridge for weeks.

Who knew I could have had a potential cash cow on my hands. I can see it now, 'Mans yoghurt explodes in womans face...'

Brietbart-free version

[Sleepy]

This can be found somewhere more mainstream.. no need to promote the Brietbart site:

http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2010/11/18/Man-rejects-fruit-jar-suit-settlement/UPI-38081290112519/ [upi.com]

Laws of Physics?

[echucker]

The guy claimed the lid came off with enough force to render him unconscious. Considering the lids to those jars weigh probably 10g at most, how fast would it have to travel to hit him hard enough to be knocked out? I'm betting at least a few hundred m/s. Wanna bet that the force required to propel the lid at such a velocity already would have blown the glass jar into shards long before he tried to open it?

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[ikkonoishi]

It hit him in the eye. Shock and pain alone could have made him pass out. It doesn't have to be sheer physical trauma.

Glass can be pretty strong when under tension so long as the force is applied evenly up until the part where everything fails.

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[bart416]

Well, quick google search indicates you need about 300kg to knock somebody out. In other words about 3000 newton. So lets leave acceleration out of the question at first and simply look at the pressure required to generate such a force. Lets assume the jar has a 5cm radius. So the surface area of the lid would be about 0.0078 cm^2 in other words (don't have a calculator at hand so could make mistakes on the math). And since pressure is force on surface area we can assume it'll take about 3.8 bar of pressure