Fat lawsuits are on the way, and lawyers are licking their chops. They view obesity as smoking and food companies as the next "Big Tobacco".

An overhead projection on display yesterday at a public health law conference summed up the group's efforts: "Patience, hell. Let's sue somebody."

While public health advocates, trial lawyers and nutritionists had bandied about ideas of regulating food ads, obesity-related lawsuits were the frontline issue for the conclusion of the three-day conference at Northeastern University. [...]

"We must remember that the anti-tobacco movement did not just sue the tobacco companies. We sued lots of people," Mr. Banzhaf said. He advised his colleagues to consider suits against doctors who do not warn obese patients about their health risks.

Even parents of morbidly obese children, where it could be shown the parents did not try to protect their children from related health risks, could be fair game in custody disputes, he said. Those suits would follow the lead of ones where parents who smoked around their children lost partial or full custody.

Doesn't this just sound lovely. Lets drive up the price malpractice insurance for doctors even more, as well as the price of food and groceries for everyone.

This isn't about social justice, it's about money for greedy trial lawyers.