So This Is What Professor Torts Was Talking About

We were discussing transferred intent in assault and battery cases when out of nowhere our Torts professor mentioned a dietary fraud case she had heard about that she just had to share with the class.

A 68-year-old US health food executive is set to begin a 15 month sentence for labelling a 530-calorie doughnut as low-fat.

The label on Robert Ligon's company's "carob-coated" doughnut said it had three grams of fat and 135 calories.

But an analysis by the US Food and Drug Administration showed the doughnut, glazed with chocolate, contained 18 grams of fat and 530 calories.

Investigators discovered Ligon bought full-fat doughnuts from Cloverhill Bakery, a Chicago company, and repackaged them as diet doughnuts.

Ligon's three-year-long nationwide doughnut fraud - which involved selling mislabelled doughnuts, cinnamon rolls and cookies to diet centres - crumbled when customers complained about gaining weight.