McDonald’s found liable for US girl’s burns from hot chicken nugget
- A second jury will decide how much compensation is owed after Philana Holmes’s daughter was injured by a piece of food that fell on her lap at the drive-through
- The girl, who is autistic and did not testify, had started screaming as the nugget was pressed into her thigh by a seat belt
McDonald’s is to blame for not warning customers about the dangers of its overheated Chicken McNuggets, one of which fell on a little girl’s lap and left her with second-degree burns on her upper thigh in 2019, a Florida jury ruled on Thursday.
A second jury will be empanelled to decide just how much McDonald’s and its franchise operator will be ordered to pay.
The jury’s decision came after two days of testimony and arguments about what happened to a four-year-old girl in August 2019 and who was responsible.
The girl’s mother, Philana Holmes, testified that she bought Happy Meals for her son and daughter at a McDonald’s in the city of Tamarac, receiving no warning that the food might be unusually hot.
After receiving the food from the drive-through window, Holmes said she handed the food to her daughter and son in the back seat and drove away.
When a piece of chicken fell on her daughter’s leg, Holmes said she did not realise at first why her daughter was screaming.