Jury Burns McDonald's Again - Hot Coffee Then, But Hot Chicken Now

WASHINGTON - July 21, 2023 - PRLog -- A Florida jury awarded $800,000 in damages to a 7-year-old girl for the suffering and mental anguish caused when a "dangerously hot" Chicken McNugget fell onto her, causing a second-degree burn.  A jury determined that McDonald's was liable for failing to provide reasonable instructions or warnings about the risks of burns from eating very hot food.

In many ways this seems to parallel a 1990's case in which a jury found McDonald's liable for burning an adult - leaving her "disfigured and scarred" - by serving her coffee which was "dangerously hot," says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who has taught product liability - and this very case - for many years.

He also put together another lawsuit against McDonald's for making truthful but misleading claims about its french fries which resulted in a $12 million dollar settlement

While many suggested that the earlier coffee case was a ridiculous example of a legal system out of control, a graduate of the George Washington University Law school proved just the opposite, and dramatized her findings and analysis of this famous case in an award-winning movie entitled "Hot Coffee."

Such awards are also supposed to remind companies that they should not create unusual and unnecessary dangers, and thereby discourage them from doing so, or at the very least not refusing to warn customers of the hidden danger.

It appears, from this most recent case, that McDonald's didn't learn that simple lesson, says Banzhaf, who forced McDonald's to settle for over $12 million in a law suit for misrepresenting its french fries.

He says that the McNuggets' suit is in many ways more serious that the earlier coffee one because the victim was a young innocent child, and because she was disfigured as a result.

Banzhaf points out that this new suit by the girl against the fast food giant is valid even if the parent was also negligent in preventing her disfigurement since McDonald's should have foreseen that it might occur.

Prof Banzhaf has been called "a Driving Force Behind the Lawsuits That Have Cost Tobacco Companies Billions of Dollars," "The Law Professor Who Masterminded Litigation Against the Tobacco Industry," and a "King of Class Action Lawsuits."

When he successfully applied the legal tactics he used so successfully against the tobacco industry to food sellers, he was called "the Ralph Nader of Junk Food," "The Man Who Is Taking Fat to Court," "a Major Crusader Against Big Tobacco and Now Among Those Targeting the Food Industry," and he created a new legal specialty of trying to protect food companies against the new and very successful sue-fat lawsuit movement.

http://banzhaf.net/   jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com   @profbanzhaf