McDonald’s Found Liable After Florida Girl ‘Disfigured’ by Chicken Nugget

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McDonald’s has been found partially liable after two Florida parents claimed their 4-year-old daughter suffered second-degree burns from a “dangerously hot” chicken nugget, leaving her “disfigured and scarred.”

A jury found the franchisee responsible for negligence and failure to warn the customer about the risk of hot food, The Associated Press reported on Friday. McDonald’s itself was found to have failed to provide instructions for safe handling, but not to be negligent.

The lawsuit raises renewed questions about the extent to which food producers should take safety precautions in order to protect their customers. Mcdonald’s denied the claims against it and said it made “food safety a top priority.”

In the lawsuit, filed in the 17th judicial circuit in Broward County, Philana Holmes and Humberto Caraballo Estevez claim that on August 21, 2019 the mother drove their then-4-year-old daughter—who is not named—and her brother to a McDonald’s drive-thru in Tamarac, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale.

A car sits in the drive-thru at a McDonald’s restaurant on January 27, 2022 in El Cerrito, California. The fast food giant was found to be liable after a 4-year-old child was burned by a chicken McNugget from an outlet in Tamarac, Florida in 2019.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

There, Holmes purchased a six-piece Chicken McNuggets Happy Meal. Court documents go on to say the nuggets in that meal were “unreasonably and dangerously hot” and caused a burn on the child’s thigh after being stuck behind her seatbelt.

In a deposition, Homes said her daughter’s upper thigh was “really, really red” when she removed the nugget from it. “She’s screaming, she’s yelling,” Holmes said.

The lawsuit, originally filed with the court in August 2022, alleges that as the nuggets were included in a Happy Meal, they were intended for a child and therefore should have been able to be touched by bare skin.

It said the franchisee and the restaurant chain had a “duty” not to sell chicken nuggets that were “defective, harmful, and unfit for human handling—let alone consumption.”

It also claimed that the defendants had failed to adequately train and supervise workers handling the cooking of the chicken nuggets at the store, which it said amounted to negligence.

The lawsuit specifically noted that McDonald’s had failed to provide an “appropriate warning” for the “foreseeable risk of harm” on either the Happy Meal box or the box containing the chicken nuggets, which may have reduced or avoided that risk.

The couple are demanding $15,000 in compensatory damages, saying they have been left with continued medical expenses for their child, who it said had “sustained bodily injuries” as well as experiencing “pain, suffering, mental anguish and emotional distress.”

A second jury will now be convened to decide how much the defendants must pay in compensation.

In a legal response from McDonald’s included in the court documents, the company denied all the allegations against it, and said that the injuries detailed “were the result of or partially caused by pre-existing conditions which were unrelated to this accident,” though it did not specify what those conditions were.

Scott Yount, a Tampa-based lawyer representing McDonald’s at the trial, told local news network WPLG on Wednesday that the child had dropped all six nuggets onto her lap, and the burn was in “the one location where the McNugget was trapped by the seatbelt for two minutes.”

Newsweek approached McDonald’s via email for comment on Monday.

In a statement given to the South Florida SunSentinel, a McDonald’s spokesperson said: “This was an unfortunate incident, but we respectfully disagree with the verdict. Our customers should continue to rely on McDonald’s to follow policies and procedures for serving Chicken McNuggets safely.”

The franchisee stated to AP that its “sympathies go out to this family” for the “unfortunate incident,” but added: “We are deeply disappointed with today’s verdict because the facts show that our restaurant in Tamarac, Florida did indeed follow those protocols when cooking and serving this Happy Meal.”

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