What's Up With That? #27: Hot lips sink Pizza Hut's ship

A Pennsylvania woman and her husband are suing the Pizza Hut restaurant chain because she burned her chin on a hot popper.

(For the non-snack-savvy in our reading audience, hot poppers are jalapeno peppers stuffed with cheese, battered, then deep-fried.)

The plaintiffs allege that Pizza Hut "failed to warn Sorana Georgescu-Hassanin the appetizers were hot."

Umm... they're called "hot poppers," right? What part of the word "hot" did Ms. Georgescu-Hassanin not understand? "When they said 'hot,' I didn't know they meant, like, you know, hot."

I know that "bad" sometimes means "good," and "wicked" sometimes doesn't mean "evil," but I'm unaware of any regional or colloquial usage in which the word "hot," when applied to food, doesn't mean hot, either with heat or capsaisin or both.

The ludicrous part of the lawsuit — as though it weren't risible enough on its face — arrives when the husband of the injured woman, Hatem Hassanin, wants the restaurant to pony up $25,000 for "the loss of companionship and comfort of his wife."

What "companionship" and "comfort" could this guy not get from his wife because she burned her lips on a stuffed pepper?

Hmmm.

If husbands can successfully sue for the lack of that, I predict long lines at the courthouse.

And what's Mr. Hassanin going to do with the $25 grand? Hire the services of, shall we say, working professionals until his wife's mouth heals up? Is that even legal in Pennsylvania?

Chalk up another victory for creative attorneys, and knock a few more points off the collective American IQ.