I'm surprised the ruling was 4-3 and not a bigger majority. I don't expect the supplier to have extremely tight quality controls around the presence of bones. Boneless is a convenience, not an absolute guarantee.
Similarly a bone in say a chicken nugget could be treated as a tolerable defect if it's infrequent enough. But to tolerate it in something literally advertised as "boneless" is weird, and probably why the ruling was this split.
If boneless chicken doesn't have to be literally boneless, does it have to be literally chicken? Or would a manufacturing process that allows it to accidentally contain horse meat be acceptable by the same logic?
The courts ruling that chickens contains bones and therefore consumers should expect them is arbitrary. Chickens also contain salmonella etc, consumer expectations around boneless wings essentially rests on industry practices not inherent limitations. McNuggets and cheeseburgers aren’t going to contain 2 inch bone fragments but boneless wings may so buyer beware.
Here restaurant negligence or lack thereof was considered irrelevant. Absolutely zero effort is still acceptable, that’s what makes it newsworthy.
It's a guarantee in any jurisdiction with adequate consumer protection law.