Replies

Doesn’t matter. It is certainly a “franchise” store now. Regardless, if this store benefited from corporate advertising, sales of corporate product, access to new employees (via their new Obama ‘hire-fest’), argument could be made they fostered the culture...

The whole franchise vs company store element of this discussion is irrelevant except in the most strict of legal senses*. McDonalds, corporate, has a significant stake in HOW its franchises are run. Just like every other franchise operation. It's the reason why franchise corporate organizations employ things like mystery shoppers, spot inspections and the like to ensure that their franchisees are operating within the boundaries of corporate policies.

McDonalds, corporate, needs to be getting itself out front on this. They should be visibly preparing to launch their own investigation of the matter (but which can't interfere with the police one), promising to revoke the franchise should the franchisee be found negligent. They should be promising to insist that the attackers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Finally, and this hasn't been mentioned yet I think, they should also be promising to seek civil redress to the fullest extent of the law against the attackers, regardless of what happens on the criminal side of the situation (like what Ron Goldman's father did to OJ after the acquittal)

(* the strict legal sense being that if the franchisee is found to have been in direct violation of corporate policy in some way, the corporate organization could - under some circumstances - avoid some legal responsibility. However, if the franchisee were following corporate policy, or there wasn't a corporate policy on such a scenario, corporate could still be held liable I think)