Day 024 - 15 Sep 94 - Page 07
1 We took enforcement actions, either separately or
2 generally, with other states against four false nutrition
3 and health related claims on foods as to the Kellog
4 company, Quaker Oats, Sarah Lee products -- let us see --
5 Nabisco, a company called CPC which made another form of
6 margarine; Nabisco made Flashman's margarine; Craft for
7 claims regarding a product that I do not know if you have
8 here, it is called cheez whiz -- it is a product -----
9
10 Q. You do not have to go into details.
11 A. It is virtually food, and there may be one or two
12 others. But the work regarding fastfood nutrition was
13 part of an overall enforcement effort, trying to ensure
14 that American consumers were told the truth and got the
15 information they desired about what was in the foods they
16 were putting into their bodies.
17
18 Q. There were other areas of work also that you were doing
19 against other companies and other industries?
20 A. Oh, yes.
21
22 Q. Was it mainly the food industry?
23 A. No. I am trying to place it in the time context, but
24 at that time we were investigating -- we had investigated,
25 on a multistate basis that I initiated, AAMCO
26 Transmissions, which was a national transmission company
27 for fraud and the repair of transmissions, resulted in
28 judgments being taken, I think, in 14 states. We were
29 just starting an investigation of the airline industry
30 where we met in a similar fashion to what the meetings we
31 had with the fastfood restaurants.
32
33 We had, in this instance, in my office in Dallas, meetings
34 with six or eight, I think it was, of the major airlines.
35 We picked them as well because of their travel log. We
36 met with American Airlines, with Continental, Transworld
37 Airlines, United, Delta, Southwest Airlines, which is a
38 local carrier, and one or two others in much the same way
39 that we had met with the fastfood companies. We had
40 concerns, we had not reached conclusions as to the cures
41 for what appeared to be violations of our laws, and we
42 wanted to hear from the companies to learn what they were
43 doing, whether they could accommodate our concerns without
44 severely impacting their marketing practices and other
45 things such as that.
46
47 I can now recall, since I had the meetings within a week
48 of my son being born, that that would have been in 1987 in
49 the summer, specifically end of July, first part of August
50 1987. We met with other folks on a continuing basis. Not
51 everything I did, as I said, had to do with multistate
52 enforcement efforts; a great deal of it did and this was
53 not all. I mentioned I wrote a Law Review article on
54 Deceptive Environmental Advertising. That probably
55 started up later in the 1980s, perhaps early in 1990.
56
57 Q. So these disputes you had with McDonald's, a previous
58 witness on behalf of McDonald's implied, seemed to imply,
59 that you had some kind of grudge against McDonald's; would
60 you like to comment on that?
