‘Croissant Fraud’: Tourists Win $5,000 After Suing French Hotel Over Stale Pastries
Tourists who received stale croissants at their hotel in France have successfully sued over it.
Only croissants that are made with 100% butter are supposed to be straight, while crescent-shaped croissants (“ordinaire”) can be made with a mixture of fats. By French law, butter must have at least 82% butterfat.
There’s generally no reason to bother with croissants in most of the United States. I certainly don’t want to pick them up at the grocery store. As time passes since my last visit to France my standards might relax a little bit. And then I’ll visit again and I’ll become far pickier about pastries (as well as cheeses and chocolate).
So while I’m generally not sympathetic to most tort claims, I completely side with the lawyer and his wife who sued Club Med in Provence for providing them with a smelly room and stale croissants.
My only hesitation in making a full-throated endorsement of the decision is that they had expectations of Club Med, whose primary redeeming quality is their late-1970s and 1980s jingle that I can still hear from television: “a Club Med vacation… the antidote for civilization.”
A couple who claimed their luxury holiday at a French hotel was made miserable by a smelly room and stale breakfast croissants have been awarded nearly £4,000 [US$4,944]. …[They] sued the travel company Club Med over claims that “uneatable” food and a mouldy bedroom ruined a week-long family break in Provence.
…The couple told a judge at Central London county court that the family had been looking forward to a “gourmet” experience in a four-star setting. …But they told Judge Justin Althaus that after an “awful” dinner on the first night and “stale breakfast pastries” the next morning, the family left the resort each day for the rest of their stay and refused to eat another evening meal on site.
…Earlier, the lawyer had told the court that Club Med had assured the family that the hotel’s restaurants would provide a “gourmet” experience. Instead, he said, “everything about the food was poor”. …[The judge] ruled that charging the family for hotel parking was “inconsistent with the representation that they would enjoy an all-inclusive experience”
If a hotel in France advertises a gourmet experience, and they cannot deliver passable croissants, that is fraud and they should be held liable.
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