Second-degree burns caused by McDonald’s fast food lead a jury to award $800,000 in damages to a 4-year-old girl after her mother drove away from a drive-thru in South Florida.
The Chicken McNugget that injured the child’s thigh was 200 degrees in temperature, according to media reports.
“This was a very, very hot Chicken McNugget,” said Bob Jarvis, Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law professor. “The temperatures that these fast foods register always amazes me, and I wonder whether the food must be that hot. Maybe it does.”
Jarvis
| Jarvis
After purchasing the Happy Meal, Philana Holmes handed the package to her then 4-year-old daughter, Olivia Caraballo, and son in the back seat of her car. During the exchange, the Chicken McNugget fell on the toddler’s thigh.
“I would be curious to know whether the packaging was open, had the mother opened the package, and whether McDonald's or the franchisee had properly closed the package,” Jarvis told the Florida Record. “There has been talk that there should be warning labels on these Happy Meals but I'm not sure a four-year-old is going to benefit from a warning on a Happy Meal that the food inside is hot and has to be handled carefully.”
The Associated Press previously reported that Holmes took photos of her daughter’s thigh and recorded audio of her screams on a cellphone, which was played back to the jury.
The original request for damages was $15 million.
“Maybe the jury sat there and decided the mother was responsible in large measure and that's why instead of awarding 15 million, they awarded less than a million,” Jarvis said in an interview. “Shouldn't the mother have realized the food comes from the drive through window very, very hot and you have to really supervise your child?”
McDonald’s said in a statement that its workers had followed food safety rules while cooking and serving the meal and that what happens with the food once it leaves the drive through is beyond their control.
However, it wasn’t a very good argument, according to Jarvis.
“It’s the argument every manufacturer makes that once it leaves their possession, they have no control over it,” he said. “At some point, the manufacturer is not responsible, but here it was almost instantaneous that the girl got burned literally seconds after the food had gone from the McDonald's drive-through window to the ultimate consumer.”
In a similar case, dating back to 1992, a New Mexico jury awarded Stella Liebeck $2.7 million in punitive damages after a cup of McDonald's hot coffee spilled in her lap and caused third-degree burns on her body while in the drive-thru. But a judge later whittled down Liebeck's multimillion dollar award to $480,000.
"In this case with the 4-year-old girl, I assume the award came down to what the jury really believed about how much pain and suffering the daughter went through, how disfigured her thigh was, and what the likely outcome of future plastic surgery will be," Jarvis added.