How hot can a Chicken McNugget be? According to a jury in South Florida, hot enough to cause second degree burns on a child’s leg when it fell out of a Happy Meal. McDonald’s and a franchise holder were found to be at fault and will pay damages.
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 split; jurors found the franchise holder liable for negligence and failure to warn customers about the risk of hot food, and McDonald’s USA liable for failing to provide instructions for safe handling of the food. McDonald’s USA was not found to be negligent, and the jury dismissed the argument that the product was defective.
“Our sympathies go out to this family for what occurred in this unfortunate incident, as we hold customer safety as one of our highest priorities,” McDonald’s owner-operator Brent Upchurch said in a statement. “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.”
Jurors heard two days of testimony and arguments about the 2019 episode that left the 4-year-old girl with a burned upper thigh.
Philana Holmes testified that she bought Happy Meals for her son and then-4-year-old daughter at a drive-thru window at a McDonald’s in Tamarac, near Fort Lauderdale, the SunSentinel reported. She handed the food to her children, who were in the back seat.
She evidently did not check the temperature of the food to insure that it was safe, even though the little girl was autistic. She pulled away from the drive thru and shortly after heard her daughter screaming. She pulled out her phone to take pictures of the burn and record her daughter’s screams.
The sound of the girl’s screams were played in court. The child did not testify, the newspaper reported.
Lawyers for McDonald’s noted that the food had to be hot to avoid salmonella poisoning, and that the nuggets were not meant to be pressed between a seat belt and human flesh for more than two minutes, as occurred in this case.
The girl’s parents sued, saying that McDonald’s and the franchise owner failed to adequately train employees, failed to warn customers about the “dangerous” temperature of the food, and for cooking the food to a much higher temperature than necessary.
However, by law, certain foods need to be cooked to a certain temperature to avoid food poisoning. And one can argue that common sense would suggest that if you purchase hot food then it will be hot, and care should be taken when handing it out to a child–especially in a moving vehicle– to make sure there are no temperature or choking hazards. The jury apparently did not consider any of these conditions.
Nevertheless, both sides agreed the nugget caused the burns, but the family’s lawyers argued the temperature was above 200 degrees (93 Celsius), while the defense said it was no more than 160 degrees (71 Celsius).
Experts have commented that this case is strongly reminiscent of the infamous McDonald’s “coffee scalding case” that occurred in 1994 in Albuquerque New Mexico, where an 81-year-old woman held a cup of hot coffee between her legs while in her car and was burned in the process of taking off the lid. She sued, claiming the coffee was too hot and won. That incident has become a hallmark of the frivolous lawsuit, the excessive litigiousness of American society, and the unwillingness to take personal responsibility for one’s mistakes.
