Pay up Mayor McCheese!

I hope this guy gets jack squat. Even if it happend as he says, there is NO way he deserves $10 million, muchless $1 million.


Man say hold the cheese, claims McDonald's didn't, sues for $10 million

Justin D. Anderson
Daily Mail Staff
Friday August 10, 2007
A Morgantown man, his mother and his friend are suing McDonald's for $10 million.
The man says he bit into a hamburger and had a severe allergic reaction to the cheese melted on it.
Jeromy Jackson, who is in his early 20s, says he clearly ordered two Quarter Pounders without cheese at the McDonald's restaurant in Star City before heading to Clarksburg.
His mother Trela Jackson and friend Andrew Ellifritz are parties to the lawsuit because they say they risked their lives rushing Jeromy to United Hospital Center in Clarksburg.
The lawsuit alleges Jeromy "was only moments from death" or serious injury by the time he reached the hospital.
"We're interested in seeing McDonald's take responsibility and change a systemic quality control problem that endangers the lives of up to 12 million Americans with allergies," said Timothy Houston, the Morgantown lawyer representing the plaintiffs.
Houston said his clients were in Morgantown in October 2005 and stopped at the Star City McDonald's on the way home to Clarksburg. Jeromy Jackson was living with his mother at the time.
Jeromy did his part to make it known he didn't want cheese on the hamburgers because he is allergic, Houston said.
He told a worker through the ordering speaker and then two workers face-to-face at the pay and pick-up windows that he couldn't eat cheese, Houston said.
"By my count, he took at least five independent steps to make sure that thing had no cheese on it," Houston said. "And it did and almost cost him his life."
After getting the food, the three drove to Clarksburg and started to eat the food in a darkened room where they were going to watch a movie, Houston said.
Jeromy took one bite and started having the reaction, Houston said. One of the three immediately called the McDonald's to let restaurant employees know they had messed up the order, but had to cut the call short when Jeromy started having a bad reaction, Houston said.
At least two managers at the McDonald's called the Jacksons afterward to apologize for what happened, Houston said.
McDonald's representatives offered to pay half of Jeromy's medical bills -- which totaled about $700. When Houston became involved, he said the company offered to pay all the medical costs.
The plaintiffs weren't interested, and McDonald's wasn't offering anything more than medical costs.
The Jacksons and Ellifritz filed the lawsuit on July 18 in Monongalia Circuit Court.
Houston didn't know if McDonald's had yet been served with the complaint.
The lawsuit seeks damages on two counts of negligence, one count of intentional infliction of emotional distress and one count of punitive damages.
The fast-food giant has been sued before.
In one notorious instance in 1992, Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old woman from Albuquerque, N.M., sued McDonald's after she suffered third-degree burns from spilling a hot cup of coffee in her lap.
A jury later awarded Liebeck $2.9 million.

Contact writer Justin D. Anderson at justin@dailymail.com or 348-4843.

 

Dude, look at your fuckin' burger before you take a bite. If the potential reaction is going to be that bad, why would you ever put your life in the hands of a teen punk working at McDonald's.

Furthermore, his douchenozzle friends need to learn how to use a phone and dial 9-1-1. I'd like to sue his friends for putting my life in danger by "rushing" to the hospital, likely ignoring speed limits and other traffic control devices.

 

Sounds like a shake down, and that a small hush-money settlement may be in order, but

1. McDonald's has a pretty good contributory negligence defense here. If it's so damned important that he not have cheese, he damned well better open the bun before chowing down. It ought to be a near automatic behavior on his part.
2. We have no idea whether anyone else in the group ordered a QP w/cheese, and he picked up the wrong burger. If so, slam dunk for the defendant.
3. There is no comparison between this case and the hot coffee case. In the hot coffee case, it was the policy of the McDonald's to superheat the coffee over acceptable temperature limits, a level of institutional malfeasance that did not happen here.
4. Adding the mother and friend as parties to the suit is the definition of chutzpah.

 

This is America, where personal responsibility is a rarity and dumbass lawsuits are common.

 

It's actually quite amazing this hasn't happened to him before, considering his age and that he's trying to shove TWO quarter-pounders down his throat.

EDIT: Adding that if it wasn't the cheese, the excess McDonald's woulda killed him eventually. Stats on two quarter pounders (sans cheese): 810 calories, 39 grams of fat, 14 grams of sat. fat.*

*stats from mcdonalds.com (http://app.mcdonalds.com/bagamcmeal?process=item&itemID=6)

 

Gotta agree...there needs to be a great deal of culpability on his part. If it's that medical important, look at your freaking burger before chomping down half of it.

 

Part of me wonders if this whole thing wasn't planned out in some way. I mean, one of his friends called McDonald's when he was getting sick, but they didn't call 911.

Also, Mapquest tells me Star City, WV, and Clarksburg are 40 miles apart. The burgers were bought in Star City en route to Clarksburg. So he had plenty of time to peek into the bag and see if there was any cheese on his burgers.

 

I wondered about that too.

Friend: "My friend is deathly sick from a reaction to the cheese you put on his quarter pounders."
McD's: "Would you like to come back for a refund and corrected order?"
Friend: "No, but we want you to pay $10 million in damages and give him a $10 McDonald's gift card."
McD's: "Let me check with my manager."

 

And should have been No. 1.

 

If I eat cheese I have two to three days of utter misery ahead of me. Not death, mind you, just GI shit that makes life unpleasant. Nobody's slippin' cheese past me. It just will never happen. I do not even know how psychotic I would be if the shit could kill me. This guy's a lying, profiteering asshole.

 

I think the award to the plaintiff should be in quarter pounders.

Sans cheese, of course.