McDonald’s and a franchisee are guilty after a hot Chicken McNugget from a Happy Meal fell on a little girl’s leg and caused second-degree burns, a South Florida jury found in a case reminiscent of the famous hot coffee lawsuit. the nineties.
A second jury will determine how much McDonald’s USA and its franchise owner, Upchurch Foods, will pay the child and her mother, the South Florida SunSentinel reported.
Thursday’s decision was divided, with jurors holding the franchisee liable for negligence and failure to warn customers of the risk of hot food, and McDonald’s USA liable for failing to provide instructions on how to handle the food safely. McDonald’s USA was found not negligent and the jury rejected the argument that the product was defective.
“Our condolences go out to this family for what happened in this unfortunate incident as we consider customer safety one of our highest priorities,” McDonald’s owner-operator Brent Upchurch said in a statement. “We are deeply disappointed with today’s verdict as the facts show that our restaurant in Tamarac, Florida did indeed follow those protocols in cooking and serving this Happy Meal.”
Jurors heard two days of testimony and arguments about the 2019 episode where the 4-year-old girl suffered a burnt upper leg.
Philana Holmes testified that she bought Happy Meals for her son and then 4-year-old daughter at a McDonald’s drive-thru window in Tamarac, near Fort Lauderdale, the SunSentinel reported. She gave the food to her children, who sat in the backseat.
After she drove off, her daughter started screaming. The mother testified that she didn’t know what was going on until she stopped to help the girl, Olivia Caraballo, who is now 7, the paper reported. She noticed the burn on the girl’s leg and took photos with her iPhone, including audio clips of the child’s screams.
The sound of the girl’s screams was played in court. The child, who is autistic, has not testified, the newspaper reports.
McDonald’s lawyers noted that the food had to be hot to avoid salmonella poisoning, and that the nuggets were not meant to be pressed between a seatbelt and human flesh for more than two minutes.
The girl’s parents sued, saying McDonald’s and the franchise owner had not adequately trained their employees, failed to warn customers of the food’s “dangerous” temperature, and cooked the food at a much higher temperature than necessary.
While both sides agreed that the gold nugget caused the burns, the family’s lawyers claimed the temperature was over 200 degrees, while the defense said it was no more than 160 degrees.
The case will likely bring back memories of the 1990s McDonald’s coffee lawsuit, which became something of an urban legend about seemingly frivolous lawsuits, even though a jury and judge had found it anything but.
A New Mexico jury awarded Stella Liebeck, 81, $2.7 million in damages after she was scalded in 1992 by hot McDonald’s coffee spilling on her lap and burning her legs, groin and buttocks as she tried to cover the cup with holding her legs while prying off the lid to add cream outside of a drive-thru.
She suffered third-degree burns and was hospitalized for more than a week.
She had initially asked McDonald’s for $20,000 to cover hospital costs, but the company sued. A judge later reduced the price from $2.7 million to $480,000, which he said was appropriate for McDonald’s “deliberate, wanton, reckless” and “callous” behavior.
