Ex-Employee With AIDS Sues McDonald's

AP ^ | 6/22/5 | THOMAS J. SHEERAN

[SmithL]

CLEVELAND -- A former employee with AIDS who is seeking millions of dollars in damages from McDonald's quit because he felt victimized by discrimination, his attorney said in opening statements Wednesday. The burger chain said the man refused a new position and resigned.

"Discrimination has put him in that position," Paige Martin told a Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court jury in the case by Russell Rich, 41, of Akron, against McDonald's Corp. She outlined a series of Rich's lower-paying jobs without health insurance since he quit in 1997.

The burger chain "destroyed his life" and destroyed a professional identity formed during a 21-year career that began when Rich was 13 and worked at a McDonald's counter, she said. He rose to become an award-winning manager who left a franchise restaurant in suburban Stow for a company-owned store.

Martin said Rich kept his AIDS secret. The company apparently learned of it within weeks of when Rich took a job in July 1997 in a corporate restaurant in Minerva, located east of Canton, and was hospitalized with suspected meningitis.

"Everything at work became a hostile work environment," Martin said.

[SmithL]

Fine, award him a lifetime supply of fries, and let the attack lawyers eat their precentage of them.

[Reactionary]

I'm sure liberals will argue that everyone with AIDS should be allowed to work in a kitchen and serve food to the public.

The possibility of a lethal blood-borne infection obviously doesn't outweigh the necessity of people feeling good about themselves.

[Gritty]

I don't want somebody with AIDS handling my food.

Period.

[Michael Goldsberry]

... have some Taco Bell "Special Sauce" with that.

[Brilliant]

"felt victimized...."

No legal cause of action for that.

[Brilliant]

kept his AIDS secret..."

There should be a law against that.

[taxesareforever]

Would you like the Value lawsuit or would you like to Super Size it?

[upchuck]

Another whining, victim hood queer.

Gee, my day has been made!

[bannie]

I am certain that--if I discovered that I had AIDS--I would isolate myself in some way. I can't imagine being so selfish that I cared not ONE PINCH for the lives of others.

WHY don't we have AIDS sanatoriums just as we had TB sanatoriums? IF we had taken immediate action as soon as AIDS was recognized, we would have had a decent chance of an early stoppage of it in the USA.

I'll revert to childish name-calling by stating that those who knowingly let this get so out of hand are selfish dogs.

[Rakkasan1]

today's latest "sewer"...
I guess he could sue Ronald McDonald if he got it from him and Ronald knew he was positive (but in a bad way)

[DoughtyOne]

Rich rejected a $300,000 settlement offer. Rich said he pursued the suit because McDonald's should pay for his AIDS medications costing tens of thousands of dollars a year, not the taxpayer-financed Ohio AIDS Drug Assistance Program.

How about baseball season ticket Rich? Your forgot season tickets to the local football and basketball franchises too.

Gotta teach those people a Mickey D's a lesson you know.

[Rakkasan1]

Gotta teach those people a Mickey D's a lesson you know.

[Conservatrix]

If he wins, the judge/court/jurors are bigger (insert word for cats that starts with "P") than the fruitcake is.

[AIC]

When I was a teen and working at two places that served and prepared food, it was a law for everyone including myself to get a medical checkup at lease once a year. Now, I don't know that it is.
It's just like when I got married, both my spouse and myself had to get a blood check. This was the law, however, because for whatever reason people don't have to get a blood check before marriage anymore.
I know I would feel a lot better if it was the law for every place that serves food to have their employees to have a medical checkup once or twice a year.

[BenLurkin]

bttt

[DoughtyOne]

There really is truth in what you say. Most object.

Look, if nothing else they could have at the very least closed bath houses and public places where men have multiple partners in just a few days. Some of the bagging about how many were being bagged by some of these people were shocking.

Exponentially, half the homosexual men in San Fancisco have slept with everyone in that half, if not more. That's pretty startling.

Practicing that risky behavior, I find it very difficult to support public funding for the risky practioners.

[af_vet_1981]

I'm sure liberals will argue that everyone with AIDS should be allowed to work in a kitchen and serve food to the public.

They most certainly will not !

They want (most) corporations to pay them

but they don't really want them serving food to their circle of friends.

They only want them to serve conservatives ...

Which is why both AIDS and liberalism should be quarantined

[bannie]

We've let it run amuck. I think it's horrible how we've treated it as a political item. It's a freakin' transmittable, disease FOR WHICH THERE IS NO CURE; and it needs to be isolated.

[DoughtyOne]

Mr. McDonald, you have the right to remain silent.

You will pay millions of dollars for this employee and pay for all his medications for the rest of his life as well.

You owe it to him.

Might just as well make it easy on yourself buster!

LOL

[wdkeller]