“Because some tiny text on the box wouldn’t have affected this case in the slightest.”
Yes it would, because it would have helped protect the manufacturer from potential liability. This guy may have ignored the warning and gotten the disease anyway, but he couldn’t have claimed that the manufacturer was aware of the risk and concealing it from the consumer.
The manufacturer decided to take this risk by not doing that, knowing that some people will get sick and sue them. They apparently decided that the amount of money they lose on these lawsuits is less than the sales they might lose if people read a warning label on their product and decided to go with a safer alternative. They made a business decision to accept the lesser potential loss, plain and simple.
“you got sick because you didn’t use a product in a rational manner. That’s your problem, not anyone else’s.”
Whether he was using the product in a “rational manner” is completely subjective when it comes to food and eating habits. I think that eating tofu is irrational, but that’s a wholly subject argument that would have no bearing on a discussion like this. He was preparing the popcorn according to the directions and consuming it, which is the intended use. There is nothing, in and of itself, irrational about that, despite the fact that you think he shouldn’t have been eating so much popcorn.
More text simply to protect a company from the courts, not to protect the consumer... Yeah, that's making regulations that make sense... WARNING: Hot Coffee is hot!