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Vegetarians Lose Case Against Taco Bell

Radhika Shankar in Lincoln, Nebraska

Sivaramakrishna Valluru wanted Taco Bell pay him and his wife airfare to go on a Ganga pilgrimage because the food giant had served them beef. But Valluru's demand did not hold water to a Nebraska judge.

Though strict vegetarians, the 31 year-old and his wife, Sailaja, had decided to dine at Taco Bell in November last year. To their horror, they discovered the rice side-dish they ate contained meat. They immediately asked, the Irvine, California based restaurant chain for money to return to India to perform a religious purification ceremony.

They explained that having been strict vegetarians since birth it was a sin, in their faith to consume meat, which could only be absolved by a cleansing in the Ganga.

To the $ 97 million Tricon organization, which also owns KFC and Pizza Hut, Valluru's claims were groundless. But to Valluru, a doctoral student in agriculture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a trip to India is an expensive but necessary journey. He filed a claim in the Lancaster County Small Claims Court, seeking $ 2,100 each.

Valluru was crestfallen with the outcome. Even then he said: "Ninety-five per cent of the time, justice will be served in this country. This case might be falling into the 5 per cent of cases."

According to County Judge Jean Lovell, the claim failed because it did not show the rice was unwholesome or unfit for human consumption. She also found the damages claimed by the couple were not "foreseeable," even if the restaurant broke a contract to serve them meatless rice. "Although the court does not question the sincerity of the plaintiffs' beliefs or motives in this case, the plaintiffs have failed to present sufficient evidence to justify a judgment in their favor," she wrote.

If Vallurus decide on pursuing additional legal action, it would not be the first time for Taco Bell.

In an earlier incident, the fast food restaurant settled a suit filed by Mukesh K Rai, Carpinteria, California, for inadvertently serving him meat in a bean burrito.

The 33-year-old pharmacist was incensed when the restaurant's staff ignored his complaint, "They say, 'What's the big deal? You ate meat,' " Rai told a local paper.

"I am a minority," he said. "They continue to treat this as a trivial thing, but Indians are about a billion of the world's population, and about 80 per cent to 90 per cent of them are Hindus."

Rai claimed that he was so traumatized by the experience of chewing a beef burrito that he had to consult a psychiatrist. Strangely, Valluru's case sounds almost the same as Rai's case. The California resident claimed his spiritual guru in Britain advised him to journey to India to purify himself by bathing in the holy waters of the Ganga.

When Taco Bell refused to give him a refund or apologize for the April 1997 incident, Rai filed a suit.

"He clearly repeated the order twice so that he would be ensured of not receiving a burrito with meat," the suit stated. He sought $ 144,000 for his expenses and damages. The restaurant finally paid a confidential sum to settle a lawsuit in February.

Though Rai accepted the settlement, he said in an interview, "Taco Bell has trivialized the importance of this suit. They still haven't shown any remorse whatsoever."

Rai's Santa Barbara-based lawyer Joel Crosby feels Taco Bell should take the suit seriously.

"Although we don't have a large Hindu population, we do have a lot of vegetarians," Crosby said.

Though Rama Valluru said he thought he made a strong case for a very similar incident, he was not so lucky. The Vallurus have not decided if they would pursue the case further but one thing is certain: They will make the trip to India.

"It is a must for me that I do it," Rama Valluru said.

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