You never know where that finger has been......
Posted on 05/09/2005 8:27:53 AM PDT by SwinneySwitch
South Texas native has sued, been sued many times before
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Anna Ayala grew up in a dirt-poor Texas town not far from the Rio Grande. She was the baby of an extended family of 14 children. She trained horses and painted. She had two children of her own and followed her sister west to San Jose, yearning for a better life. She lived in relative obscurity.
Then, on March 22, she went to Wendy's for a bowl of chili.
When she claimed she bit into a tip of a human finger that day, the 39-year-old daughter of a migrant crop-picker was plucked from her quiet existence.
Police have arrested Ayala. They say she slipped the finger in her own chili to try to shake down Wendy's. She is expected to be arraigned today.
As would happen to many people put under the microscope of law enforcement and the media, a complex portrait has emerged - one that, in Ayala's case, shows some dark shades.
The youngest of Olga Escamilla's four children, Anna Dalia Ayala was born in 1965. Ayala's mother was a seasonal farmworker who traveled the states picking crops. Because she wanted her children to be in school all year, Escamilla arranged to have them adopted by her mother. So Anna, Mary, Juan and Luis were raised along with their grandparents' 10 other children in South Texas, said Jose Ayala, one of the 10.
Home was in Hildalgo County, a land of heat, farms, ranches and poverty. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 88.3 percent of the residents are of Hispanic or Latino origin. More than a third of the residents live below the federal poverty level.
At 19 or 20, according to court records, Anna Ayala moved in with a man 23 years her senior, the father of her son and daughter. They never married. But her babies' father, Guadalupe Reyes, shared her interest in horses, owning some in San Benito. But the couple parted ways around 1993, according to court documents.
In 1993, Ayala left the South Texas for Silicon Valley. For a time, Ayala apparently became a successful businesswoman, running a janitorial service. But interviews and court records suggest a darker side began to emerge.
Once here, she moved several times. She was sued by creditors over relatively small amounts of money. She also began filing lawsuits - a lot of them.
It began in 1996, when she sued Santa Clara County and its social services agency. The case was later dismissed and records were destroyed in a routine purge of court files. Ayala's attorney was Ira Freydkis of San Francisco. He declined to speak with a reporter. And after being her attorney in at least three more cases, he declined to represent Ayala anymore.
One of those was a 1997 case in which she, her thenboyfriend, James Plascencia, and three of his relatives sued a woman. Court records indicate the case involved an auto accident, but the files have been purged.
Two years later, a San Jose auto dealership sued Ayala and Plascencia, accusing the pair of writing a bum check for $1,900 to buy a vehicle from Capitol Buick-Pontiac-GMC. A judge ruled in the dealership's favor but the debt never has been paid.
Ayala sued the dealership the same year. She claimed a wheel had come off a vehicle they sold her, causing an accident. That case was later dismissed.
All told, investigators say, Ayala and her children have been involved in 13 civil claims or lawsuits.
Her brother, Juan "Johnny" Ayala, a cop for 21 years in Texas, said there's no reason to doubt the claims were real. Most people just don't take the time to sue when they've been wronged, he said. "She has a history because it's happened to her," he said. "The law gives you that right."_
Face it, McDonalds was just plain stupid. The danger was real, and forseeable.
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Then they should have been serving cold coffee -- right?
God help this country.
did they ever find out where she got the finger from?
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I never did hear, but it just goes to show, you need to look at what you are about to eat !!!! :-)
Human skin can burn from temps of 105 degrees. The coffee would be "undrinkable" for 99.99% of customers. Granny would have received burns from coffee at almost any "acceptable" temp. Basically the jury thought she was a sweet old lady and she deserved something from a big, mean company.
haha! :)
What a patently SILLY comment!
Do you really mean to say that it doesn't matter how hot an object is, that it bears no relation to the burn? Do you have ZERO common sense?
If you read the article I posted, it even says - right in the article -- that the difference between the temp of McDonalds' coffee and a reasonably hot cup meant that the woman was burned MUCH FASTER and much more severely as a result.
That accords with the common sense that I happened to acquire when I was, say, oh, about three years old.
What happened to you?
You can have hot coffee without having SCALDING coffee, which is, by the way, undrinkable for the time-period while it is scaldingly hot. The coffee is, after all, intended for drinking, at least the last time I checked.
You can have hot coffee without having SCALDING coffee...
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I think your point is clear - there is no way this woman is responsible for her own actions. Very liberal thinking.
As little tots seem to love to try new things and are curious - they often can get burned on stove-tops, pots, burner surfaces
I was cured quickly by my mother by having my hand carefully placed for a brief second on a stove
I was told that electrical outlets were the same except even worse
It cure me forever
We used the same trick on our two kids when tiny tots
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No burns, no playing with matches, no sticking forks in electrical outlets
Showing tiny tots what happens when toast is "over-toasted" and turns black and smokes and crumbles also gives tiny tots a good object lesson
Granny should have been taught long ago
When I make coffee I expect it to be piping hot - I also recall my parents telling us a tiny tots that perculators with hot coffee grounds will get hot sticky coffee grounds on your skin as well as scalding hot coffee
Yet I know the coffee cup itself will act as a heatsink and adding cream will also cool the coffee to nearly lukewarm
I don't know about Cool Hand Luke, but I love my coffee hot
Victimization has become an industry for scum
It appears we have lots of "victims" here on FR also
I suggest they tattoo reversed warning labels on their foreheads
But be careful on the mirror - it might break if you are an idiot and you'll have to sue somebody who made the glass
Her actions were -- she ordered coffee and paid for it. McDonalds' action was to give her an unsafe product, passing it out of a window, knowing that some people would sip it and burn themselves, and that others would have to find a safe place to put it while it cooled off.
There was no warning that it was ridiculously and unneccessarily extra-hot.
McDonalds knew that people would have to balance or hold the coffee in one hand while fishing for change in the other, and would need to lean out of the window to give the money while balancing the coffee. Cars, by the way, are not designed to have and are not known to have adequately level, flat surfaces to balance a top-heavy cup of coffee. Seats aren't flat. Dashboards aren't flat. Not all cars have cup holders.
McDonalds know ALL of that, and continued to ignore the results of customers getting burned.
Its ALL in the article I posted, from the "liberal" anti-business source, the Wall Street Journal.
Some posters said she was from Philippines
Please keep the McDonalds hot coffee posts to a minimum, or off this chili fingers thread. I was born in the first half of the last century when people didn't try to sue somebody every time they got hurt! FCOL!
You are WRONG. People like their coffee hot. People like you are the reason the civil courts are a joke.
You are obviously a lawyer and YOU are a part of the problem. Cold coffee anyone!
No he's just a lawyer trolling for cases
Actually, the McDonald's case was alot more complicated than you're making it out to be. Apparently there are regulations about the temperature fast food restaurants must maintain for coffee and hot liquid products. That particular MacDonald's had previous complaints filed against them for the temperature of their coffee. If you're serving coffee to people in cars, you do have some responsibility to keept the temperative at a sensible level. That's why there are regulations. They did not heed the warnings, and eventually a big accident happened, as did it with this woman. You usually find when there's a big payout like the one at MacDonald's, the jury is punishing the Company for not fixing the problem before a big accident happened. I didn't know about this either because it just feels better to say juries are out of control. However, I like to have coffee from time to time in my car and I don't expect it to be hot enough to cause serious burns on my mouth or on my body if it should spill on me.
"Flicking the Bird" has a whole new meaning
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