(GoRealNewsNow.com) – An 8-year-old girl has been awarded $800,000 in damages for suffering burns from a chicken nugget at McDonald’s four years ago.
When she was 4, Olivia Caraballo received second-degree burns on her leg from a nugget that fell out when she opened a Happy Meal box in the car.
The hefty compensation has now been awarded by a Florida jury, after in May, a separate jury ruled that McDonald’s and the local franchise holder were liable for hurting the girl, The New York Post reports, quoting NBC6 South Florida.
The girl’s parents, Philana Holmes and Humberto Caraballo Estevez had asked the court for $15 million in damages from the fast food chain and the Upchurch Foods, Inc. franchisee, for the incident that occurred in Tamarac, Broward County.
They complained that the restaurant had served their daughter “unreasonably and dangerously hot” nuggets at 200 degrees.
The girl’s mother bought a six-piece Chicken McNuggets Happy Meal from the restaurant’s drive-thru and gave it to Olivia in the backseat.
As the child opened the box, one of the red-hot nuggets fell onto her lap before getting stuck between her leg and the car seat for about two minutes.
In the lawsuit they filed in August 2019, the parents explained that the resulting burns left Olivia’s thigh “disfigured and scarred” from burns.
They argued that McDonald’s and the franchise owner didn’t warn customers that the food was hot and posed danger, cooked the food to a higher temperature than necessary, and didn’t train their employees properly.
According to the fast food giant’s lawyers, the nugget’s temperature didn’t exceed 160 degrees, which is what the McNuggets are cooked at to prevent salmonella poisoning. They also insisted that the nuggets should not be “pressed against human flesh for more than two minutes.”
Three months ago, the previous jurors in the case decided that the franchisee was liable for failing to warn customers about hot food risks and for negligence, while McDonald’s was liable for not offering directions on handling its foods safely.
However, the jury ruled that McDonald’s was not negligent in the burning incident.
“I’m actually just happy they listened to Olivia’s voice and the jury was able to decide a fair judgment, I’m happy with that,” the girl’s mother said after the second jury’s ruling.
Florida jury awards 8-year-old girl $800K after she was burned by McDonald’s chicken nugget https://t.co/1S8XYG9ZND pic.twitter.com/742kzP4yXg
— New York Post (@nypost) July 20, 2023
