Court limits locations of McDonald's food poisoning lawsuits

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The families of two children who suffered E. coli infections after eating McDonald's hamburgers must sue in the rural counties where the restaurants were located, not in a bigger city where McDonald's also has franchises, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The decision was a victory for McDonald's Corp., which sought to transfer the lawsuits from Jackson County, where Kansas City is located, to Taney County, where Branson is, and Webster County, home of Marshfield, in southern Missouri.

Two separate lawsuits each contend the children got sick in July 2001 and had to spend three weeks at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, including several days on kidney dialysis. The lawsuits allege McDonald's and their franchises were negligent in training employees in how to properly prepare the food.

Meagan Bell was almost 3 years old when she ate the allegedly tainted hamburger at a Marshfield McDonald's; Samantha Ryan was 8 when she ate at the Branson McDonald's, said their attorney, Kathleen Hagen, of Kansas City. Both suffered permanent kidney damage, she said.

A Missouri law that took effect in August 2005 requires lawsuits seeking money for alleged wrongdoing to be filed where the victims were injured. But because the girls became ill and the lawsuit was filed before August 2005, their attorney followed the looser venue law in place at the time.

That previous law allowed negligence lawsuits either where the injury occurred or where the defendant companies have an office or agent "for the transaction of its usual and customary business."

In many cases, McDonald's Corp. does not directly operate the restaurants that bear its name but rather leases the land and licenses its products to an independent franchisee. The McDonald's franchises in Branson and Marshfield are owned by different corporations, neither of which owns McDonald's franchises in Jackson County.

Hagen said she sued in Jackson County not because she was shopping for a venue where jurors are perceived to be more generous but because her offices, Samantha's family and the medical experts needed to testify are all in the Kansas City area.

An attorney for McDonald's did not immediately return a call Tuesday.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-2 decision, said McDonald's ownership of real estate in multiple counties did not mean it had an "office" there for the purposes of a lawsuit's jurisdiction.

The court also rejected the argument that McDonald's franchise restaurants function as "agents" of McDonald's Corp. The court drew a distinction between the "usual and customary business" of McDonald's Corp. -- which it said is to license franchise rights for McDonald's restaurants -- and that of the McDonald's franchisees, whose usual business is selling food to people. The fact that they have a shared interest does not mean their usual business is the same, said the majority opinion by Judge Laura Denvir Stith.

Stith was joined by Chief Justice Michael Wolff, judges Stephen Limbaugh Jr. and Mary Russell and Southern District Court of Appeals Judge Jeffrey Bates, who was sitting in for Supreme Court Judge William Ray Price. Jr.

In a brief dissent, Judge Ronnie White said McDonald's had not overcome the presumption that the trial judges ruled correctly in originally allowing the lawsuits in Jackson County. He said McDonald's Corp. could have supplied its franchise agreements, as sought by the plaintiffs, to prove it had no "offices" or "agents" in Jackson County.

White was joined by Judge Richard Teitelman.

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Case is State ex rel. McDonald's Corp. v. Honorable Sandra Midkiff.

On the Net:

Supreme Court: http://www.courts.mo.gov/page.asp?id=27