Mickey D's Strip Search With Fries . . . I'm Lovin' It!

The Louisville Courier Journal reports that McDonald's settled the lawsuit brought by the former employee subjected to a strip and cavity search by her manager.  A Kentucky jury awarded $1.1 million dollars plus $5 million dollars in punitive damages. In ageeing to pay the compensatory damage award McDonalds and the plaintiff avoided the pitfalls of appeal and confiscatory taxes on punitives. 

This is a strange story, apparently fast food chains in and around Louisvelle were receiving prank phone calls from a caller purporting to be a police officer.  The caller said, so-and-so employee is suspected of stealing and would instruct managment to isolate the employee in the restaurant office and conduct this search.  In this case the manager got a little more---involved? 

McDonald's obviously argued that the actions of its manager were not its actions, and that as outrageous as the acts were, they were based on a fraud committed by some one else.  The plaintiff successfully argued, that the acts of the manager were in fact exactly the actions of McDonalds, and that the chain knew or should have known that these calls were being made system-wide and that it was negligent in failing to instruct managment not to report the calls to the police, properly. 

This is a sickening case, when you think of your work-age child being subjected to this sort of thing during their first employment. 

Good call on everyone's part in reaching a settlement in my view.