Philana Holmes Florida mom files a lawsuit against a Broward McDonald’s outlet over a hot chicken McNugget which left her then 4 year old daughter disfigured.
A Florida family is blaming a Broward McDonald’s outlet for serving a hot chicken nugget that left a four year old girl scarred and disfigured as a result of burns she suffered when the item dropped on to her lap.
During opening statements Tuesday morning in a filed lawsuit, Philana Holmes told a court in Broward County that as she was leaving a McDonald’s drive-thru she heard her daughter screaming in the back of the car.
The mom had momentarily passed over the Happy Meal to her two children sitting in the back of the family SUV.
‘unfit for human handling — let alone consumption’
When Holmes pulled over, she found a hot chicken nugget lodged between her daughter’s thigh and a seatbelt, which had remained in contact with her skin for around two minutes according to the suit.
Holmes and the girl’s father, Humberto Caraballo Estevez, are now seeking $15,000 in damages on the grounds the fast food restaurant served a chicken nugget that was ‘defective, harmful and unfit for human handling’.
The suit claims McDonald’s served food that was ‘unfit for human handling — let alone consumption’ due to the temperature according to WPLG.
According to the lawsuit, on August 21, 2019, Holmes went to the McDonald’s drive-thru in Tamarac and ordered, among other things, a six-piece Chicken McNuggets Happy Meal for her then-4-year-old daughter, Olivia Holmes.
‘The Chicken McNuggets inside of that Happy meal were unreasonably and dangerously hot (in terms of temperature) and caused Olivia Holmes’s skin and flesh around her thighs to burn,’ reads the lawsuit.
Jordan Redavid, who is representing the burned child’s family, told a court on Tuesday that McDonald’s and the franchisee failed to warn about the dangers of the nuggets and acted negligently in serving such a hot nugget.
He brought with him to court the iconic Happy Meal box, with two golden arches for handles, and presented it to the judge.
‘The reasonable, foreseeable, intended use is for a child to handle this box. The law implies a promise from a corporation to, in this case, a child,’ he said.
‘And if its preventable, its warnable, you should warn someone about it, and if you don’t do that then you’re liable.’
His position was challenged by Scott Yount, an attorney representing McDonald’s.
‘Ms Holmes purchased 32 chicken McNuggets that day, the evidence will show that 31 of them, there was no problem with,’ said Yount on Tuesday afternoon.
In making that statement he may have been referring to all of the nuggets in Holmes’s order, including those not contained within her daughter’s box of six, which fell on her lap.
‘In fact, Olivia dropped six on her lap, and she has one burn, and that’s the one location where the McNugget was trapped by the seatbelt for two minutes,’ he added.
‘The Chicken McNuggets are not defective, they are not unreasonably dangerous, they are not dangerously hot, and there is no negligence.’
McDonald’s and their franchisee argue food safety rules require McNuggets to be hot enough, otherwise, they’re unsafe to eat. The defense also argues what happens to a McNugget once it leaves the drive-thru window is beyond their control.
In a pre-trial deposition, Holmes described the events after she picked up the food.
‘As I’m pulling away out of the drive-thru I hear [Olivia] start to yell. But the time I make it to the street it’s a full blown scream,’ she told the court, according to a transcript.
Is McDonald’s to blame?
‘I turn around and she dropped the nugget in her lap. So I’m trying to drive and knock them out of her lap as I’m going down the street.
‘So as soon as I was able I pulled over, I run to the back seat of the car and I got out the nugget that I could see and I then pulled off her seat belt across the lap there was a chicken nugget that was stuck that I could not reach.
‘As I am taking the nugget off of her skin it’s falling apart in my hand. Her thigh – upper thighs – it was really, really red. She’s screaming, she’s yelling,’ she said.
Caraballo Estevez also spoke duing a deposition, and told the court that although the girl does not say the scar bothers her, she does sometimes make reference to it.
‘Every once in a while she looks at [the scar] and she refers to it as her chicken nugget.’
The hearing is due to resume on Wednesday.
