Courts

Since When Should Happy Meals Burn A Little Kid's Legs?

Meals that burn are decidedly unhappy.

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(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Happy Meals are marketed to kids. From the cute little box to the toy inside, any parent who’s tried to road trip with a kid will attest to how successful McDonald’s marketing has been with these things. And the kiddie food par excellence? They are perfectly hand held and taste amazing before your pre-frontal cortex kicks in and has you asking those dreadful question like “what part of the chicken is this?” and “why is the meat iridescent?” Odd as these things are, they are par for the course of ordering those tasty battered nuggets. What no one goes in expecting is a burn wound, which is why a jury hit McDonald’s with an $800k verdict. From Law360:

A Florida jury has rendered an $800,000 verdict in a suit alleging McDonald’s and its franchisee caused a little girl to suffer second-degree burns from a dangerously hot Chicken McNugget in a Happy Meal.

An attorney for Olivia and her family, John Fischer, told Law360 on Thursday that the defendants denied fault for years.

“The reality is, McDonald’s and Upchurch Foods never took this case seriously,” he said via email. “They doubted the case, they doubted this family and they doubted this firm. We demonstrated through years of litigation and in two separate jury trials the compelling nature of the evidence which ultimately supported Olivia’s claims that were made all along.”

This isn’t the first time McDonald’s has been in the hot seat for burning someone. They were once the poster child of what a good PR team can do to someone.

Years ago, a woman in her golden years went to a McDonald’s drive-thru expecting a cup of coffee. Instead, she got a hospital visit and thousands of dollars in medical expenses. The McDonald’s employee handed her a scalding time bomb. When she accidentally spilled it, it went off and left her with third degree burns to the crotch. The good news is that pain isn’t the biggest concern with burns like this. The bad news is that’s because the heat is so potent that it damages all the layers of your skin to the point that it damages nerve endings. I won’t post the pictures here; she had to get skin grafts for Christ’s sake.

Multibillion-dollar corporation and repeat offender that received over 700 complaints about its coffee temperature and even settled a few cases or a 78-year-old lady that just wanted a little pep in her step having to spend eight days in a hospital — who do you think would win in the court of public opinion?

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That’s right, clown shoes won!

As if getting burned wasn’t enough, her case got used as a prime example of torts being used to exploit and take advantage of small mom and pop shops like McDonald’s.

It is very easy to look at a cup of coffee or a chicken nugget and balk at the nerve of people expecting hundreds of thousands as recompense. But before you do that, I want you to remember two things. The first is that one time you swore that you could eat spaghetti without getting any sauce on your shirt and the disappointment that followed. The second is that time you thought you were on death’s door but decided not to go to the hospital because if the random heart pain didn’t kill you, the bill would. Somebody has to cover the medical bills and it damned sure shouldn’t be the kid.

People spill things. McDonald’s knows this. It isn’t that much to expect them to make sure that the coffee they brew or the unspecified chicken parts they deep fry in oil that should probably be changed are safe for human consumption once they hit the customer’s hand.

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Best wishes to Olivia and her family.

McDonald’s Owes $800K In Chicken McNugget Burn Suit [Law360]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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