After a child suffered second-degree burns from a chicken nugget that fell off a tray at McDonald’s, the company was ordered to pay the victim’s family $800,000.
A lady called Philana Holmes in the year 2019 bought Happy Meals from a drive-thru and fed them to her kids.
Holmes told Daily Mail that she was not advised that her daughter Olivia Caraballo, then four years old.
Could find the meal particularly hot, so when she heard her screams of agony, Holmes drove into a parking lot and saw a burn.
The mother documented Olivia’s injuries with photographs and played audio recordings of her cries in court.
The attorneys for Olivia and her family asked for $15 million in damages, arguing that the traumatising act warranted $ 5 million in damages for the last four years and an additional $ 10 million to cover the next seventy-four years.
It’s all over once we leave those doors. There’s no option to circle back in five or ten years to see how Olivia is doing.
Family attorney John Fischer reportedly remarked during closing arguments, “You have to do it now or you can never do it again.”
Legal representatives for the fast food chain maintained that the youngster was no longer in agony after three weeks had passed after the damage had healed.
They claimed that the mother was at fault and asked the jury to award $156,000 in compensation for past and future losses.
Jennifer Miller, a defence counsel, said, “She still goes to McDonald’s, she still asks to go to McDonald’s, and she still drives through the drive-thru with her mom, getting chicken nuggets.” “The wound doesn’t disturb her at all. It was all Mom’s doing.
On Tuesday (July 18), Holmes testified that the daughter, now eight years old, calls the scar on her inner thigh her “nugget” and is determined to have it surgically removed.
According to CNN’s reporting from May, a South Florida jury held the fast food joint and Upchurch Foods liable for failing to warn or offer instructions on the possible injury from the heated McNuggets distributed through a drive-thru in Tamarac, Florida.
On Wednesday (July 19), the girl’s family was given $800,000 for the girl’s pain and suffering, deformity, mental anguish, annoyance, and loss of ability to enjoy life.
The jury awarded a total of $800,000, consisting of $400,000 for previous injuries and $400,000 for future damages.
After the trial, Holmes told reporters, “I’m actually just happy that they listened to Olivia’s voice and the jury was able to decide a fair judgement,” as reported by ABC News. I’m satisfied with it.
I really didn’t expect anything, so this is much above and above what I deserved.”This momentous decision brings meaningful closure to an arduous and prolonged legal process,” the family’s lawyers said in a statement.
This decision upholds that the defendants, Upchurch Foods Inc. and McDonald’s USA LLC, must now bear the penalties for their wrongdoing and offer full justice.