McDonald's Facing $1.5M Lawsuit After Teen Scalded By Hot Water Spill

A McDonald’s in Multnomah County, Oregon, was facing a lawsuit after a teenager suffered serious burns on her abdomen and lower body from a scalding cup of water allegedly served to and spilled on her by a restaurant employee. According to reports, the 14-year-old was seeking $1.56 million in damages.

The lawsuit, filed Oct. 4 in Multnomah County Circuit Court, claimed a McDonald’s employee served the minor a dangerously hot cup of water July 29, 2017. The McDonald's franchise is in Madras, a Central Oregon town about 120 miles southeast of Portland.

The girl allegedly suffered partial thickness burns on her abdomen and lower body. The incident caused damages to the external layer of skin, the epidermis, and the lower layer of skin, the dermis. However, it's unclear what percentage of the girl's body was burned.

The incident is a reminder to the 1994 case when McDonald's was sued for serving a beverage that was too hot. Stella Liebeck, who was at a McDonald’s drive-thru in Albuquerque, New Mexico, had suffered extreme third-degree burns on her legs that required skin grafts as a result of coffee spilling. She was awarded $3 million in punitive damages.

McDonald’s restaurants label hot beverage containers with “Warning: Hot Contents” labels.

Recently, McDonald's faced criticism due to an unrelated case in which a woman recorded a video showing maggots crawling inside a ketchup dispenser in the restaurant in Cambridge, England.

The stomach-churning video of the "live maggots" was shared on Twitter

"Never going near the ketchup in McDonald's again," the woman who shared the video wrote. "I told one member of staff and she literally just ignored me and carried on serving customers... We had to literally stop someone from eating it because they didn’t realise. It's so grim."

In response to the incident, a representative for McDonald’s told the Sun: "We’re extremely sorry to see this, and have tried to get in contact with the customer directly... Our condiment area and dispensers should be checked for cleanliness every day and we are looking into what happened here."