The Next Big Extortion Law Suit

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:: Don Barrett, a Mississippi lawyer, took in hundreds of millions of dollars a decade ago after suing Big Tobacco and winning record settlements from R.J. Reynolds, Philip Morris and other cigarette makers. So did Walter Umphrey, Dewitt Lovelace and Stuart and Carol Nelkin.
Ever since, they have been searching for big paydays in business, scoring more modest wins against car companies, drug makers, brokerage firms and insurers. Now, they have found the next target: food manufacturers. More than a dozen lawyers who took on the tobacco companies have filed 25 cases against such industry players as ConAgra Foods, PepsiCo, Heinz, General Mills and Chobani that stock shelves and refrigerators across the United States.
The suits, filed over the past four months, assert that food makers are misleading consumers and violating federal regulations by wrongly labeling products and ingredients. While they join a barrage of litigation against the industry in recent years, the group of tobacco lawyers is moving aggressively. They are asking a federal court in California to halt ConAgra's sales of Pam cooking spray, Swiss Miss cocoa products and some Hunt's canned tomatoes.
"It's a crime -- and that makes it a crime to sell it," said Barrett, citing what he contends is the mislabeling of those products. "That means these products should be taken off the shelves."
The food companies counter that the suits are without merit, another example of litigation gone wild and driven largely by the lawyers' financial motivations. Barrett said his group could seek damages amounting to four years of sales of mislabeled products -- which could total many billions of dollars.  http://www.startribune.com/business/166662006.html
Useless lawsuits will only profit the lawyers on both sides and it will drive food prices up.
I'd say that the courts and juries will throw out these court cases, but then you are dealing with judges and juries that are either bought off or stupid or both.  All you have to do is look at the law suits in Las Vegas where a drug company is being forced to pay close to $500 million to some patients who got Hepatitis C from a doctor who misused the drug.  Then the different agencies will want their share of the money. 
And the consumer, well, not to much.