Want fries with that settlement?
Starting tomorrow,
Perhaps that is because McDonald's agreed to offer this $15 million Instant Prize Giveaway to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit. In 2001, the company was tarred by the so-called Simon Marketing scandal, when FBI investigators revealed that employees of Los Angeles-based Simon had stolen millions of dollars in prizes for such McDonald's contests as "Monopoly" and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"
(At the same time, it was alleged that McDonald's deliberately withheld winning prizes from customers of its Canadian restaurants -- chew on that, America-baiting former prime minister Jean Chretien! This is the subject of a separate, ongoing lawsuit in Ontario.)
Hilariously, McDonald's promptly announced a $10 million Instant Prize Giveaway "to right this wrong," as then-chairman Jack Greenberg said in a press release. Cynics noted that the giveaway might inoculate McDonald's from class-action lawsuits on behalf of defrauded customers. For once, the cynics were wrong.
About 30 lawsuits were filed across the country, Chicago lawyer Aron Robinson told me, and most were settled last year in Cook County, Ill., near the McDonald's headquarters in Oak Brook. I would describe the $20 million overall award as not exactly super-sized, given the heft and visibility of the defendant. (I read John Grisham's "The King of Torts" while on vacation, and am now an expert on class-action litigation.) $15 million is to be given away this weekend; $2 million is to be spent administering the giveaway, and $3 million was divided up among the 28 lawyers involved.
As a co-lead counsel, yes, Robinson got a larger share than some of the other lawyers, and no, he wouldn't tell me what it was. Still, a 20 percent contingency fee on a class-action suit isn't exactly Big Casino, as we Grisham aficionados know. Robinson said part of the settlement called for McDonald's to promote tomorrow's giveaway, but I have seen only one print ad and no broadcast advertising about it.
McDonald's has printed millions of fliers explaining the giveaway, which the catatonic counter people may or may not remember to include with your order. I've eaten at two McDonald's this week; once I got the flier, and the second time I didn't. McDonald's employs a small army of public relations flacks. I am still waiting for one of them to return my calls.
Valuable publicity
A few years ago I plumped for Mardy Grothe's amusing book on chiasmus, "Never Let a Fool Kiss You, or a Kiss Fool You." The title is an example of chiasmus, derived from the Greek word for "cross." Another example might be, "Even when I have nothing to write about, I have to write about something."
Now the Rhode Island-based psychologist has published what looks like another amusing tome called "Oxymoronica: Paradoxical Wit & Wisdom from History's Greatest Wordsmiths." You can read more about the book at oxymoronica.com, and please note the appreciative blurb from Richard Lederer, who coined the term "e-dress," used at the end of this column since time immemorial.
"Oxymoronica" is itself a coinage. Basically, Grothe is just lumping together a bunch of quotes and aphorisms that are either oxymorons -- e.g., "Us Weekly reader," "journalistic integrity" -- or paradoxical in nature -- e.g., Andrew Jackson's description of the presidency as "dignified slavery" or King Henry IV's allusion to his "near'st and dearest enemies" in Shakespeare's play. Grothe claims to have collected more than 1,400 "self-contradictory" quotations during the past 15 years.
Two more for the road: "I shut my eyes in order to see" -- Paul Gauguin, now packin' 'em in at the Museum of Fine Arts -- and this perhaps too cruelly realistic observation attributed to the late anthropologist Margaret Mead: "Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everybody else." I don't think you will see that posted on elementary school walls any time soon.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist.His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
