[QUOTE=Una Persson]
And yet, I still insist that for this hoax to work, it depends upon a failure in the stewardship that human beings are supposed to show each other. It depended upon a person being so incredibly stupid that they would willingly commit or assist in committing a sexual crime on a young girl on incredibly flimsy urging. It reminds me of that psychology experiment, I forget the name, where people could be urged into shocking the hell out of other unknown people simply by an authority figure telling them to do so.
Would anyone here have done exactly what the manager did? Explain why you would have done that.
This case is akin to someone dialing every home in a city and saying “this is Jesus. I want you to go next door and beat the hell out of your neighbor, because they’re Muslims.” You dial enough people, and some will do it, fully convinced that Jesus wanted them to be their hit man, in full denial of any factual evidence or rational thinking whatsoever. So if it happens, should we have nightly news bulletins telling us “remember kids, if someone calls you on the phone and says he’s Jesus and wants you to beat up someone, don’t do it?” What about the next case, where Jesus wants you to stand around naked at the airport. Or rob a bank. Or eat a banana slug. If you search Snopes right now, you can find innumerable hoaxes going around where someone fell for it. Nigerian scammers, anyone? I work in a professional environment in an office, where scads of scam e-mails are received as junk. If one of my co-workers is so stupid as to fall for a Nigerian scammer, should my company pay out big because we didn’t open every day with a Safety Tip on how Nigerian scammers work? What about the 50 other scam e-mails that arrived that day? There are some who receive more than 100 phishing attempts, scams, and hoax mails before lunch. How much of our daily billable hours do we spend in effect trying to teach people basic survival skills of life in this wacky modern world we live in?
I can understand why people think that McDonald’s “must pay”. It stems from the belief that any, or most failures of management which cause harm must be something that the company could have prevented via training or information exchange. As well as the belief that because the hoax had worked at other McDonald’s, that it was likely to keep working. I can understand that, really. McDonald’s should have got the word out better, but, and this is a big “but”, even if they failed in this instance, because of the egregiousness of falling for this scam - that is, what it took to fall for it - I do not feel they should have been legally liable.
What I don’t understand is why it is so difficult for some people here to understand the other opinion, which is that no sane, intelligent, or rational person should have been expected to fall for this, and McDonald’s can only communicate so much before it would be lost in the noise. Sometimes it doesn’t come down to anything a company can do, and sometimes it comes down to the fact that human beings do incredibly stupid or criminal things on their own.
I’m still waiting for someone to break their uncomfortable silence and defend the set-for-life award to the criminal scum who helped commit the sexual assault. How about it? How is she the “victim”, for committing a crime which involved her giving up the most basic level of stewardship someone should show towards a young girl like the (real) victim?
I don’t know how I can explain my position any better, and I think I will stop trying now. I didn’t think it was that unreasonable or kooky a stance; perhaps I should review it and see if I really am thinking in the right here. But it is another day of unpaid overtime work for me, so I’m not going to think about it too much. 
[/QUOTE]
I think you have a perfectly valid point and I agree to some extent. When you look at our society you see lots of cases where people are warned against their own stupidity. Look at warning labels on everything. I remember unboxing a computer and their were warning labels on the plastic bags that suggested you shouldn’t put the plastic bag over your head or give it to infants to play with.
How far are we as a society supposed to go to protect the stupid from themselves. Look at the case where fast food places were being sued because this kid was dangerously obese. The lawyer was trying to suggest they were at fault for serving fattening food. I’d love to see warning labels on fast food bags.
Warning, our food taste good but is incredibly unhealthy with almost no nutritional value. {Salads excluded}
But I digress.
Look at how many people were duped before this incident happened. I have to wonder if they were sincerely tricked or just somehow perversely attracted to the whole thing. Regardless, I think the case being made is that since similar incidents had happened and cooperate HQ knew it they can no longer claim they never imagined it could happen. Once it has happened repeatedly they do have some obligation to alert their employees and adequately warn them and instruct them.
If FF joints were being robbed repeatedly and that posed a threat to employees would HQ have some obligation to warn employees on what to watch out for? I think so. A casual memo might be to little. I remember going through avoiding sexual harassment training and having to sign off that I had received the training. It’s expensive for companies to do that sort of thing but less expensive than a series of lawsuits.
It’s also a matter of what percentage responsibility is applied to those involved. She sued for what $200 million and got 6. Perhaps the 6 million is a percentage of a larger number.
Like you, I can’t imagine why the Summers got any kind of award at all. Any rational human being should know that you don’t strip search a teenage girl under orders from a voice on the phone. It’s fucking ludicrous.