McDonald's employee wins strip search lawsuit

Great Debates
101

<sigh> You and I are never going to agree on this. Trust me, that if someone at McDonald’s thinks, “Hey, it’s a pretty good idea that we warn our managers about this,” that that means there is a legal duty to do so, because the standard for what a company should do is what a reasonable company WOULD do in the same situation, and the fact that they DID try to do it is a pretty good indication it was what a reasonable company would do. Unless you’d like to assert that McDonald’s is unreasonable in what it does? :dubious:

Plus, it wasn’t just anybody at McDonald’s that tried to get warnings out; it was their corporate legal department. Trust me, as one who knows whereof he speaks, attorneys in the corporate legal headquarters don’t toss around memos warning of possible bad things without some serious consideration of whether or not doing so can come back and bite them on the ass, so to speak. There are a host of other ways that the message could have been gotten out if McDonald’s attorneys considered that they didn’t have any duty to warn, and didn’t want to have it look like they did.

You assert that it’s unreasonable that McDonald’s warn each and every one of its employees about each and every action they might consider. But that’s not what I, or the case here, assert McDonald’s has to do. First of all, I’ve never said McDonald’s had a duty to warn the employee; the failure to warn management is sufficient here, and there are substantially fewer managers than employees. Second of all, they don’t have to warn about every stupid thing that has happened before; in this case it is sufficient to assert that they had a duty to warn about something that had happened 16 prior times to them, and 60+ prior times to the industry (of which McDonalds was aware), most of them within the prior two years (apparently; I notice you have not bothered to acknowledge this aspect), resulting in four prior lawsuits. That’s substantially different from the concept you want to jump to.

No, it’s not enough to rely on other people being smart. Over 60 other people in the same situation had done substantially the same thing in this country, that we know of (likely the number is higher but the participants declined to report it out of embarassment). McDonald’s knows that IT as a company has managers who fail to exert this “common sense” that you think should have been applied (and, for that matter, so do I). As a corporation, it can’t just hold up its hands and say, “Hey, we tried, but, you know, we just hired idiots to be our managers, and that’s not our responsibility, now is it?”

In short, and after this I’m not bothering with any added responses since it appears we won’t reach anything like a combined understanding here, while the case could have gone the way you would prefer, it isn’t unreasonable that it went the way it did. Which is all I have attempted to show from the beginning, and is why I referenced the quite equally vilified coffee case.

102

This makes no sense whatsoever. A reasonable course of action would be to have policies to prevent this incident and require managers to read them. That’s what, in my opinion, is necessary to fulfill their legal obligations. If their actions went beyond that, good for them.

No, you state that McDonald’s has to go beyond that. They have a policy in their required managers reading that specifically applies to this situation. They have dozens of other policies that, if followed, would have prevented this incident. You say that’s not enough. You say that McDonald’s should have had a piece of paper next to every phone detailing the policy. My question, which has yet to be answered, is why McDonald’s isn’t legally required to have every policy posted on every piece of equipment?

Let’s take the example of the guy who put marijuana in a happy meal. Do you think that McDonald’s has a legal obligation now to place a piece of paper with their policy on putting marijuana in happy meals at each drive through window? If a kid got sick from eating that marijuana is McDonald’s liable? Can I sue McDonald’s if I, as a McDoanld’s employee, put some marijuana in a happy meal and someone gets sick because of their negligence?

What’s the magic number before McDonald’s is legally liable.

McDonald’s has numerous policies that should have prevented this, including one tailor made for the situation. It’s absurd that a company can be held liable for an employee’s actions that violate countless policies and plain common sense.

The difference between the coffee case and this one is a matter of responsibility. McDonald’s is the one that set their coffee’s brewing temperature. In this case the manager acted contrary to all of her training and common sense. In no way did McDonald’s encourage this course of action, and they took reasonable steps to prevent it . A huge difference.

103

treis, although some aspects of this verdict trouble me, you aren;t helping your case with a bunch of bad analogies.

First, I really doubt the pot-in-burger-bag thing has happened repeatedly, and none of the examples you cite involve things likely to cause great harm. Second, I bet McDonalds most likely does have rules/warnings in place against adulterating food.

No one is saying “that McDonald’s [must] warn each and everyone of it’s [sic] employees about each and every action that they might consider”, but this happened at least 60 times before, McDonalds knew that, and the risk posed potentially great harm.

Unlike you, I think it is a good thing that McDonalds now has a warning notice next to its office phones.

It is also possible that the jury did not believe the testimony of the McDonalds security seminar guy. I don’t know. Neither of us heard his testimony. I will say, though, that if I were on the jury, and believed this testimony, I’d have a hard time voting for this verdict.

More follows.

104

There isn’t one. Nor should there be. That’s why we have rules that instruct jurors to impose a standard that is reasonable under the circumstances.

I think most people would agree that the number here is something greater than 1. In this case, the jury apparently determined that 60 incidents was enough to put McDs on notice.

105

They have rules against following instructions from someone claiming to be a cop on the phone too, so I’m not sure I see your point. Anyways, assume for a second that there have been 60 incidents of employees handing out pot in happy meals over the last 10 years and answer the questions I posed.

106

Nice work. I agree.

Reading between the lines, I sense that two of the things that struck you as odd about this case are (1) the punitive damages in a simple negligence case; and (2) the award to the manager, which also included punitives(!).

I agree here, as well. First, this is not the way punitives normally work. Unless Kentucky has some weird law on this point, this part of the verdict gets overturned on appeal. (Normally, punitives are only awarded for intentional, or wilful and wanton misconduct – wrongdoing worse than simple negligence.)

Second, I really can’t see the basis for the award in favor of the manager. I’d analogize to the cases involving a merchant’s duty to protect customers against a known risk of third party criminal acts (a pattern of hold-ups in the parking lot, for example). Even when such a duty exists, it doesn’t give rise to a cause of action in favor of the criminal. Essentially, the manager is making a claim that McDs should have stepped in and prevented her from committing a crime, because committing that crime led to criminal charges against her. How is that any different from the parking lot stick-up man suing the mall for failing to have security measures in place that would have prevented the stick-up?

Prediction? The punitives in favor of the worker, and the whole verdict in favor of the manager, get overturned as a matter of law on appeal.

107

In that case, who do you suggest should be warned about this wave of Happier-than-intended Meals?

Maybe so, but the testimony conflicted on this point, and even McDonalds’ own witness on this issue apparently acknowledged that this rule was communicated in a less than ideal way.

I am already on record as saying that, if I had been on this jury and believed the McDs witness on this issue, I would have a hard time supporting the verdict.

108

I’m not sure what you mean by this question. I mean if I had knowledge of the fact that 60 people were getting pot filled happy meals, I’d warn those 60 people. That’s really beside the question. The question is what sort of liability McDonald’s would have.

109

This makes no sense.

Obviously, if McDs knows that a specific employee is about to hand out pot to 60 specific customers, its responsibility goes well beyond warning those 60 people.

But in order for your analogy to be even remotely applicable to the cop-phone-scam situation, you have to be talking about a general risk of pot-giving , one that has happened 60 times, at other stores, over time.

My question is, what general, system-wide warning (that ex-employees in other stores have distributed pot in the past) do you suggest should be given, and to whom?

I suspect you can’t identify a warning that makes any sense, which (a) shows one of the flaws in your analogy; and (b) explains why you are dodging the question.

110

It seems some posters here want to give McDonalds a pass because the manager was **so stupid, McDonalds could not have possibly forseen this happening. ** Are they not partially responsible for hiring and promoting her? I realize we are not talking rocket science here, but the management is responsible for the health and safety of its employees, many of them minors. It seems generally agreed that this manager didn’t have an ounce of common sense. Maybe McDonalds needs to review whatever policies allow a person of such questionble judgement rise to a position of authority.

111

I’m sorry it doesn’t make sense to you. Why don’t you just answer the questions I asked?

112

Again, because your analogy is not well-thought-out, and therefore makes no sense when applied to the issue under discussion.

Let’s review.

  1. You cite a single instance of a moronic employee who stashes his pot in a bag, forgets which bag he put it in, and mistakenly hands it to a customer. Your (apparent) point is that McDs cannot warn of every bad thing, so warning of any kind of bad thing is stupid.

  2. I raise various objections to this incident as a valid analogy, which objections include (a) it only happened once, unlike the 60 times the cop-scammer thing happened; (b) there are already rules against including non-standard condiments with the food handed to customers, and no one doubts these ruleshave been communicated to employees by McDs; and (c) someone getting an extra baggie in his Mickie Ds bag has not been harmed in any serious way, and certainly not equivalent to the harm suffered by a young woman, whose strip search and sexual assault is the deliberate goal of the wrongdoer in the case under discussion.

  3. You ignore objections (b) and (c), and attempt to avoid objection (a) by hypothesizing an unlikely scenario where 60 pothead employees have forgotten where they put their stash and handed it to 60 different customers.

  4. Having some experience with hypotheticals in legal discussions, even ones that are highly unlikely, I go along with this but, having seen some additional flaws in your hypothetical, I seek clarification. I ask you, even if this wave of 60 forgetful potsmoking employees has struck McDs, what is the analogous warning that you are suggesting?

  5. You respond by weakening your already weak analogy, suggesting the warning be given to the 60 people who are/have gotten extra herbs with their burgers.

  6. I agree, but point out that this is not even remotely related to the situation under discussion (which involves potential victims that are unknown when the warning should be given). I attempt to bring the analogy (as unlikely as it already is) back to something at least sort of like the phone-cop-scam, which strikes new stores and previously unidentifiable victims each time. I again ask, given that we do not know where the bad actor will strike next, who should be warned, and how?

  7. You dodge again.
    Okay, let’s put this to bed. Starting with your nonsense hypothetical (60 forgetful employees give 60 stashes to 60 customers), what are the conceivable warnings?

i) Warn all McDs customers that sometimes potheads are forgetful, and not to eat the extra condiment (which was in a separate baggie and not added to the food iteself) if they get one?

ii) Warn all McDs employees to be mindful of their stashes, and not mistakenly give them to customers?

iii) Warn McDs supervisors to check all bags for mistakenly-added stashes?
**If ** (i) (stupid customers unknowingly eating the pot) was happening with any degree of regularity, **and **McDs knew this, and great harm was resulting, then yes, maybe it should have said something. As none of these three conditions actually exists, your hypothetical otherwise fails.

Warnings (ii) and (iii) are even sillier.

Let’s try a better hypothetical. Assume there is scammer out there, who calls random McDs employees, and convinces them to put LSD (which he supplies) in the fries. He tells the employees that he is a doctor,and this will prevent AIDS. 60 boneheaded employees believe him, and add the drug. 60 people are damaged as a result. McDs knows this, and knows that the scammer is still out there.

Should it use effective measures to warn all stores and employees about this scam?

Me? I say it should.

Warning of ridiculous and not-really damaging incidents, not so much.

Especially if the pothead employee has already been fired, and there is no mastermind out there inducing current employees to repeat the offense.

113

Let’s consider this:
Let’s say there is a manufacturing company that has many factories. We will call them MacDougals. Let’s say that MacDougals has a machine, the Acme XL-10, in each of its factories. The Acme XL-10 has been responsible for at least 17 injuries (lost limbs), and four law suits. Furthermore MacDougals knows that in the industry that there have been at least 60 injuries from using the Acme XL-10.

A)Does MacDougals have a responsibilty to warn the employee operators about the XL-10? If you answer no, why not?

B)Should MacDougals communicate the fact that the XL-10 can injure to its managers so that they may insure proper (safe) operation? Again if you answer no, why not?

Now assuming that MacDougals did not effectively communicate the danger of the XL-10 to its mangers, and an employee is injured.
Is it right for MacDougals to fire it’s manager, and hang them out to dry?

While I disagree with the coffee verdict, based on what I know, I support these verdicts.

114

I think it depends on how the injuries occurred. If, for example, the injuries occurred as a result of employees disregarding numerous policies and procedures that would have prevented the accidents then I don’t think the company should be held liable. Would it be nice if MacDougals warned each of their employees specifically? Sure, but MacDougals is a huge company and they have a great deal of turnover. It’s tough enough for them to get mission critical messages out to their ground level employees.

The dichotomy in responsibility is apparent. MacDougals is expected to be perfect. They are expected to process a few bizarre incidents from a tiny fraction of their facilities and then disseminate that information to each of their 25,000+ managers. The managers, on the other hand, have a level of responsibility befitting a drunk monkey. Even if they commit illegal acts that caused the accident. Even if they disregard general policy that would have prevented the accident. Even if they disregard a specific policy that would have prevented the accident. Even if they disregard all common sense that would have prevented the accident, MacDougals is still considered responsible.

The bottom line is that these accidents occurred because the mangers in question ignored the law, ignored general policy, ignored a specific policy, and ignored common sense, not due to any negligence on MacDougals part.

115

You misunderstood the question. The employee did not ignore posted safety warnings, and policies and procedures as there weren’t any. Now what is your answer?

116

If the employee did not violate any policies or regulations in the course of getting injured, then yes, the company is liable.

117

I was just going to write this. Yes, there is a difference between a uniformed officer (unless he’s Ted Bundy, of course) and an employer, but both have to do with how people, especially women and especially young girls, are taught to deal with authority.

I’ve been conned before. Based on some past threads, so have some otherwise bright Dopers. And aren’t plenty of the people sending money to Nigeria educated professionals? The girl didn’t have to be an ‘idiot’ to submit. No more an idiot than a woman who lets workplace harssment escalate for fear of losing her job, or who doesn’t cry out during a rape for fear for her life.

The failure to warn employees reminds me a bit of a Canadian case where the police failed to warn the public about a ‘balcony rapist’ because they thought publicity might send him into hiding. They were sued for an apology and a few hundred thou by a woman used as ‘bait.’

118

This whole ordeal could have been set up by the three people involved. Now they’re splitting the money three ways. Sure, a little law trouble at first, maybe even sit in jail for a year or so, but for 2.3 million bucks, I’d do it too.

Genius if you ask me.