Court rules boneless wings can have bones after customer tears his esophagus

After a diner’s so-called ‘boneless’ wings tore his esophagus at a restaurant, Ohio’s Supreme Court ruled that foodies can’t expect their boneless wings to be completely bone-free.

Michael Berkheimer was chowing down on some boneless chicken wings with parmesan garlic sauce at Wings on Brookwood when something got stuck in his throat.

After three days of feeling ill and constantly losing his lunch, Berkheimer went to the doctor — only to be told that a small bone from his chicken had torn his esophagus, causing an infection.

Berkheimer took legal action against the restaurant, saying they’d failed to adequately alert him that their ‘boneless wings’ weren’t actually ‘boneless.’ It’s not just Wings on Brookwood he’s going after, either, as both the farm that produced the chicken wings and the supplier company were both named in his lawsuit.

However, Ohio’s Supreme Court isn’t on his side. In a close 4-3 ruling, they determined that ‘boneless’ is a style of cooking, saying diners should be aware that chickens have bones, which can sometimes make their way into the meat.

“A diner reading ‘boneless wings’ on a menu would no more believe that the restaurant was warranting the absence of bones in the items than believe that the items were made from chicken wings, just as a person eating ‘chicken fingers’ would know that he had not been served fingers,” wrote Justice Joseph T. Deters.

Deters’ statement wasn’t wholly agreed upon by his fellow Justices, who called his reasoning “utter jabberwocky.”

Unsplash.com: Stu Moffat

The Ohio Supreme Court was fairly divided on the decision, with some calling the ruling “utter jabberwocky.”

“The question must be asked: Does anyone really believe that the parents in this country who feed their young children boneless wings or chicken tenders or chicken nuggets or chicken fingers expect bones to be in the chicken? Of course they don’t,” argued Justice Michael P. Donnelly. “When they read the word ‘boneless,’ they think that it means ‘without bones,’ as do all sensible people.”

This isn’t the first time a judge has made an eyebrow-raising ruling regarding food lately. In May 2024, an Indiana judge ruled that tacos and burritos both technically count as sandwiches, sending the internet for a loop as debates raged online.