“Disfigured and scarred” is how one Florida woman described her daughter after she alleged that an order of chicken nuggets from her local McDonald’s was served too hot, resulting in the girl being burned.
The woman, Philana Holmes, and the girl’s father have since filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s and the local franchisee, claiming that the order of six-piece Chicken McNuggets inside their then-4-year-old daughter’s Happy Meal were too hot.
The incident in the lawsuit took place on Aug. 21, 2019, and opening statements were delivered in the case on Tuesday morning.
During a pre-trial deposition, Holmes testified that the girl had dropped one of the nuggets on her lap before it fell between her thigh and her vehicle’s seat belt. It was then that the heat from the nugget resulted in the girl being burned, the suit alleges.
“The Chicken McNuggets inside of that Happy Meal were unreasonably and dangerously hot...and caused [the victim]’s skin and flesh around her thighs to burn,” the lawsuit says.
The father of the girl, Humberto Caraballo Estevez, shared in a pre-trial deposition that the incident has left a lasting impact on his now 8-year-old daughter.
“Every once in a while, she looks at [the scar] and refers to it as her chicken nugget,” Estevez said.
The lawsuit makes the claim that the food served by the restaurant was “unfit for human handling — let alone consumption” because of its temperature.
The girl’s parents are seeking more than $15,000 in damages from McDonald’s over the incident. However, the company and Upchurch Foods, the franchisee listed alongside the fast food chain in the lawsuit, deny any fault.
“Ms. Holmes purchased 32 chicken McNuggets that day,” Scott Yount, an attorney representing McDonald’s, said. “The evidence will show [that for] 31 of them, there was no problem.”
The defendants in the case have argued that food safety requirements force McNuggets to be hot enough for consumption, otherwise, they would be unsafe to eat. They also have argued that the liability is on the customer after the nuggets go through the drive-thru window, saying from that point on, it’s beyond their control.
“In fact, Olivia dropped six on her lap, but she has one burn—and that’s the one location where the McNugget was trapped by the seatbelt for two minutes,” Yount said. “The Chicken McNuggets are not defective. They are not unreasonably dangerous. They are not dangerously hot. And there’s no negligence on the part of either Upchurch Foods or McDonald’s.”
Related
Related
