McDonald’s and one of its franchisees are being sued by a Florida family after a hot chicken nugget reportedly burned a four-year-old girl.
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Philana Holmes filed the suit at a court in Broward County and explained to officials that she was leaving a McDonald’s drive-thru when she heard her daughter, Olivia Holmes, screaming in the back of the car. After stopping her vehicle, Holmes found a “piping hot” chicken nugget between her daughter’s thigh and a seatbelt stuck to her skin for two minutes. The incident occurred on August 21, 2019.
Holmes and her daughter’s father, Humberto Caraballo Estevez, are seeking $15,000 in damages. They accused the restaurant of serving a chicken nugget that was ‘defective, harmful, and unfit for human handling.’
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‘The Chicken McNuggets inside of that Happy meal were unreasonably and dangerously hot (in terms of temperature) and caused Olivia Holmes’s skin and flesh around her thighs to burn,’
During the hearing, the family’s attorney Jordan Redavid accused McDonald’s and the franchisee of failing to issue warnings about their food. ‘The reasonable, foreseeable, intended use is for a child to handle this box. The law implies a promise from a corporation to, in this case, a child,’ he said while presenting a Happy Meal box to a judge.
‘And if it’s preventable, it is warnable, you should warn someone about it, and if you don’t do that, then you’re liable. In fact, Olivia dropped six on her lap, and she has one burn, and that’s the one location where the seatbelt trapped the McNugget for two minutes,’Â
The hearing is expected to continue on Wednesday, but here’s some other McDona’ds timeline to catch
- Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants (1994): This is perhaps the most famous lawsuit filed against McDonald’s. In 1992, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck spilled a cup of hot coffee on herself while sitting in a parked car. She suffered third-degree burns and required skin grafts. Liebeck sued McDonald’s, alleging that the coffee was unreasonably hot and that McDonald’s had not adequately warned her of the risks. The jury awarded Liebeck $2.86 million, which was later reduced to $640,000 on appeal.
- Pelman v. McDonald’s Corp. (2003): In this lawsuit, a group of overweight children and their parents sued McDonald’s, claiming that the fast-food chain’s marketing practices had led to their obesity. The plaintiffs alleged that McDonald’s had misled them about the nutritional content of its food and had encouraged them to eat unhealthy meals. The case was eventually dismissed.
- McDonald’s Corp. v. Steel & Morris (1997): In this case, McDonald’s sued two activists who had distributed leaflets critical of the company’s labor practices. The activists had also set up a website called “McSpotlight,” which featured information about the negative impacts of McDonald’s on society and the environment. The case became known as the “McLibel” trial and lasted for 10 years. Although McDonald’s won the case, it was a public relations disaster for the company