From hot coffee burns to marijuana-laced burgers, fast food giants have faced some seriously spicy legal battles! Join us as we explore the most shocking lawsuits that landed popular restaurant chains in court. Our countdown includes cases of deceptive marketing, biometric data violations, food safety disasters, and even the Colonel suing his own company!
00:00Now we turn to the story everybody is talking about, the finger in the Wendy's chili.
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're discussing our picks for the incidents that landed quick-serve restaurants in court.
00:11A judge has authorized the Tim Hortons class action to go ahead, but there's a hitch.
00:17Weed Whoppers, Burger King.
00:19In 2006, New Mexico police officers Mark Landavazo and Henry Gabaldone were on duty when they decided to stop for a bite at a local Burger King.
00:26He told us how he and a fellow officer went to this Burger King in Los Lunas and got Whoppers that had secretly been filled with pot.
00:34After eating about half of their Whoppers, they noticed something unusual.
00:37The meat had been laced with marijuana.
00:39The cops used a field test kit to confirm their suspicions, then went to the hospital.
00:43There was a lot of marijuana on the hamburgers.
00:45The employees responsible were arrested and charged with aggravated battery on an officer, though they got off with just probation.
00:51Both will serve no prison time, only probation.
00:53The officers later filed a lawsuit against Burger King, alleging personal injury and negligence.
00:59Privacy Breach, Wendy's.
01:01Using your fingerprint to clock in and out of work seems like a no-brainer.
01:04Employees don't have to worry about losing a badge or remembering a PIN number.
01:07And management can be sure no one is cheating the system.
01:10But when a company collects biometric data like fingerprints, it has to follow privacy laws.
01:14It basically says you can collect iris scans, fingerprints, voice prints, facial geometry scans, but you have to get written consent to do so.
01:22Illinois has particularly strict laws around collecting this type of personal information.
01:27And Wendy's found that out the hard way.
01:29Employees who had worked for the company between 2013 and 2023 filed the class action lawsuit,
01:34alleging that Illinois-based Wendy's locations had violated the law.
01:38The employers had failed to get written consent to collect their prints, among other oversights.
01:42Are businesses in Illinois still violating this law?
01:45Every day.
01:46Wendy's settled the suit in 2024 for over $18 million.
01:50Wage theft.
01:51Five guys.
01:52Companies mistreating employees is nothing new.
01:54But in 2023, Five Guys was forced to pay for it.
01:57Well, each year, employers steal billions of dollars from their employees by working them off the clock
02:02or by not paying the overtime that they deserve.
02:05Simply put, it's called wage theft and it may be affecting your paycheck.
02:08More than 2,000 employees sued the chain back in 2017 for failing to provide them with legally required breaks
02:14and forcing them to work off the clock.
02:16The lawsuit went on for years because Five Guys kept proposing settlements and judges kept rejecting them for being too low.
02:22Considering how expensive their burgers are, it's not surprising that they're stingy with their money.
02:26Finally, the fifth settlement offer was accepted, which gave about $900 in compensation to each affected employee.
02:32By the way, did you know that wage theft is the most common type of theft in the U.S. by far?
02:36Often what we see with people who come to us with wage theft cases is,
02:40I feel like my employer did this because they were confident they could get away with it.
02:4511-inch footlong.
02:46Subway.
02:47You probably remember the super successful $5 footlong campaign.
02:50But maybe it should have been called the $5 not quite a footlong.
02:53The famous Subway $5 footlong.
02:56America's made it their own.
02:57Many of your favorite regular footlongs continue to be just $5 each.
03:00After an Australian teen posted a photo to Facebook showing that his footlong was only 11 inches,
03:05lawyers raced to cash in.
03:07Local news stations had a field day visiting Subway's and measuring the sandwiches on air.
03:11We were cheated.
03:12It's 11.
03:13Yes, it is.
03:14A little over 11.
03:15Subway ultimately settled the class action lawsuit, but a judge overruled the settlement and threw out the case.
03:20The ruling said that Subway hadn't intentionally deceived its customers.
03:24Most of its footlongs really were a footlong, and they all contained the same weight of bread and toppings.
03:28Worst of all, the money from the settlement would have gone almost entirely to the lawyers, making the suit totally frivolous.
03:34Subway spokesperson says footlong is really just a trademark name and not intended as a guarantee of size.
03:41Nonetheless, the company says it will work extra hard to make all footlongs actually a footlong.
03:46Racial discrimination.
03:48Starbucks.
03:49You probably heard about the 2018 incident in which two black men were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks for doing nothing.
03:55Protesters calling for justice today.
03:57After the arrest of two black men at this Philadelphia Starbucks on Thursday.
04:04But you might not have heard about the white regional manager, Shannon Phillips, who was fired afterward.
04:08The arrests turned into a major scandal for the coffee chain, which immediately went into damage control mode.
04:14The next year, Starbucks was in hot water again.
04:17Hit with a lawsuit from the regional manager who oversaw that store in approximately 100 other locations.
04:23Shannon Phillips, who is white, claims she was fired after the incident because of her race.
04:29Starbucks higher-ups ordered Phillips to place a white district manager on leave, supposedly for discriminatory behavior.
04:35That manager had nothing to do with the arrests, nor did Phillips.
04:38She believed the manager was innocent and that white employees were being scapegoated for the incident.
04:43She refused the order and was fired.
04:45Phillips sued Starbucks for discrimination and won more than $25 million in damages.
04:49In a statement, Phillips' lawyer said Starbucks was looking for a scapegoat and that Phillips will now be pushing for more back pay from Starbucks to be decided by the judge.
05:00Sued by Colonel Sanders, KFC.
05:02Not many chains can say they were sued by their own founder.
05:05Harlan Sanders began selling fried chicken in 1934 and his first franchise opened in 1952.
05:10He didn't start the company until he was 65, but it made him a millionaire.
05:15In 1964, Sanders sold Kentucky Fried Chicken to a pair of businessmen, but stayed on as the quality control officer and spokesman.
05:23In 1971, the men sold KFC to the Hublin Company, which started making changes to the recipes.
05:29Sanders, then in his 80s, was not happy.
05:31He opened a competing restaurant, prompting Hublin to sue him.
05:34After selling his interest in KFC, Colonel Sanders opened the restaurant and named it after his wife.
05:39Sanders countersued Hublin for $122 million for using his image to promote products he thought were terrible.
05:46The suits were settled, with Hublin paying Sanders $1 million and Sanders agreeing to change the name of his new restaurant.
05:53Mystery Meat, Taco Bell.
05:54Most people don't expect fast food to be made with top-quality ingredients.
05:58However, in 2011, a lawsuit alleged that Taco Bell's beef wasn't even actually beef.
06:03The issue comes down to how much beef has to be in a taco before you can call it a beef taco.
06:08The plaintiffs claimed that they'd tested the meat and found that it was only 35% beef, with the rest being fillers and binders.
06:14Taco Bell went on the offensive, spending millions on an aggressive ad campaign, telling customers that the meat was actually 88% beef.
06:21The lawsuit claimed that the meat filling used by Taco Bell was less than 35% beef.
06:27Taco Bell retaliated with ads saying, thank you for suing us.
06:31The lawsuit was eventually dropped, but it wasn't the last time Taco Bell went to court over its meat.
06:36In 2023, a New York man sued the company for false advertising, saying that the pictures of the food showed twice as much beef as he actually got.
06:43The false advertising suit, dubbed Where's the Beef by the folks on Twitter, alleges the chain, quote,
06:48materially overstates the amount of beef in its ads.
06:53He dropped the suit four months later.
06:55E. coli outbreak, Jack in the Box.
06:57Between 1992 and 1993, a massive E. coli outbreak linked to Jack in the Box locations in four states sickened over 700 people and killed four children.
07:06It was one of the worst food poisoning outbreaks in U.S. history.
07:10The tragedy was so severe that it led to major changes in food safety laws.
07:14It also led to multiple lawsuits.
07:16Jack in the Box ultimately paid out over $65 million to the victims and their families.
07:21The restaurant's beef supplier, Foodmaker Inc., was also sued and settled with the families for an undisclosed amount.
07:27The public was shocked by what ultimately we found out.
07:30Despite improvements to food safety regulations, E. coli continues to plague the industry.
07:35In 2024, an outbreak tied to McDonald's onions made over 100 people sick and caused one death.
07:40It also resulted in multiple lawsuits against the chain and its supplier.
07:44McDonald's says they've found the source of the onions linked to the deadly E. coli outbreak, naming Taylor Farms, a grower based in California.
07:53Strange chili ingredient, Wendy's.
07:55Finding a hair in your food's gross.
07:57But imagine diving into your bowl of chili and discovering a finger.
08:00That's what supposedly happened to Anna Ayala at a Wendy's in 2005.
08:03And suddenly I chewed something that's kind of hard, crunchy, spit it out.
08:10At first I wasn't sure what it was.
08:12Ayala attempted to sue the chain, but when you find a human body part in your food, you can't just hire a lawyer and collect a check.
08:18In the statement they say that the employee had more than 10 years of experience, that no employees had suffered a hand or finger injury,
08:26and that their suppliers, who were required by law to maintain written records of accidents, say there were no reports of hand or finger injuries.
08:34Wendy's quickly determined that the finger didn't come from any of its employees or suppliers.
08:38And a police investigation found that it hadn't been cooked.
08:41It was later revealed that Ayala had bought the finger from a friend who lost it in an accident and put it in the chili herself.
08:47She served three years in prison for fraud and was banned from Wendy's for life.
08:51Police arrested Anna Ayala at her home in Las Vegas and put her into jail without bail for grand theft and attempted grand theft.
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09:14Hot coffee, McDonald's.
09:16This lawsuit became infamous, but it wasn't as frivolous as the media led people to believe.
09:20As the story spread, the details faded until just about all anyone remembers was a woman was driving down the road with a cup of McDonald's coffee,
09:29spilled some in her lap, and got paid millions of dollars.
09:32The problem is just about all of those simple facts are wrong.
09:37In 1992, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck spilled McDonald's coffee into her lap while sitting in her car.
09:43The drink was so hot that it caused third-degree burns, and Liebeck had to undergo skin grafts.
09:48At first, she just asked the company to cover her medical bills, but McDonald's refused.
09:51They came back with an offer of what was at that point $10,000 in medical.
09:56They came back with an offer of $800.
10:00And we were just appalled.
10:02When she took them to court, a jury awarded her almost $3 million.
10:06Which a judge reduced to $640,000.
10:10Amazingly, this wasn't the only time McDonald's had to pay out for causing a severe burn.
10:14In 2023, a jury awarded $800,000 to the family of a four-year-old girl who received a second-degree burn from a McNugget.
10:22The jury deliberated for two hours before ruling in favor of the family,
10:26saying that McDonald's failed to properly warn people about possible danger.
10:30Which of these lawsuits did you think was the most shocking?
10:32Let us know in the comments below.
10:34Two residents of Alameda County in California have filed suit against Subway,
10:39alleging the chain doesn't use real tuna in its tuna sandwiches.
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