Posted on 05/23/2014 3:57:26 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
A UC Berkeley graduate who was severely burned after spilling hot coffee on her lap filed a lawsuit Thursday against In-N-Out Burger claiming employees in Oakland refused to call an ambulance.
Hedy Chen claims employees at the drive-through restaurant ignored her screams and repeated requests to call 911. Instead, she was given a pack of ice, which can exacerbate scarring, according to the suit filed in Alameda County Superior Court.
"What they were supposed to do was call 911 because the operators know that" ice is bad, said Kirk Boyd, her lawyer. "They said there is a policy of not calling 911. That policy violates their duty of care to customers."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Any business who says it’s a policy to not call 911 is a hazard to public safety and should not be allowed to stay in business.
And for me, that would be true of any business, anywhere in this country as far as I’m concerned.
The employee is not a student at UC Berkley and is therefore not as dumb as a box of rocks?
The thing is that you have to reach for the cup out your car window where, if it was so hot you drop it immediately, it goes down between your car and the window NOT into your lap.
So I am going to call lie on the "oh it was so hot I had to drop it" bit.
Now as to her being in a burn unit.... really? First and second degree burns send you to a burn unit?
In reality, not usually. Painful yes. Doctor maybe. ER maybe. Burn unit no.
So I am suspicious of the "three days in a burn unit" story.
Now most drive through windows have security cameras. So it will be interesting to see what is on that tape.
all In-N-Out Burger associates are authorized to assist our customers and to call 911 in emergency situations
So you see LOL...
They don't have that policy! LOL...
“Backpedaling” ... :-) ...
Many companies go backwards faster than they go forwards ... LOL ...
Let’s see how that conversation goes in court, with that employee ... something like this ...
“Yes, I did just hand her the coffee when she started screaming to call 911.”
“No, I really had no idea she was talking to me,”
“Yes, I thought it was necessary to tell her that we had a policy of not calling 911, but I still wasn’t convinced she was actually talking to me. She looked like she was screaming at someone else, actually. I just thought it was prudent to tell her about our policy,”
“Yes, I did get her an ice-pack, but only because I happened to notice - myself - that she spilled the coffee. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t actually talking to me.”
“Of course I was talking to her, but you must realize that, conversely, that doesn’t mean she was talking “to me”. Sometimes conversations with customers are really ‘one-sided’.”
“Yes, of course I had to tell her to move her car. That kind of screaming and yelling is really bad for business. I had to tell her to move her car, so we could continue with all the other customers. But - again - that wasn’t her talking to me — that was “me talking to her”. There’s quite a bit of difference there!”
... LOL ...
It says EVENTUALLY her friend called 911. We know there is a recording.
Was this in the paper when it happened? I can't find a 2013 article of when it happened.
It may be that the videos are saved for one year and that's why the suit wasn't filed for a year.
Another article said she said to call an ambulance.
The best person to treat a burn...ask a fireman....my son had a serious burn. One of our local fireman (lived 2 doors away) came over...put some stuff on it and told me what to do. Absolutely no mark.
Now according to one article, Chen is having laser surgery.
They better have a bazillion pictures and a pre assessment that says this will do the job.
And it was the friend who called 911. We need a second by second time log.
Companies always “backpedal” when faced with this kind of stuff.
And as far as the severity of the situation (and I hope you do realize that this is why medical personnel are called - to “evaluate”) ... you can see that the customer spent “three days at the Bothin Burn Center at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco.”
That happened “after” a medical evaluation, instead of an evaluation of a pimply-faced, inexperienced teenager at a cheap job, who says that they can’t call 911.
Well, apparently the worker at the business thought the customer was yelling at him (or her) since the worker felt compelled to say that they couldn’t call 911 because of company policy ... :-) ...
I simply do not believe that was said.
I guess that’s why people go to court, isn’t it? ... :-) ... to prove those things.
There’s a missing piece. When did she spend 3 days at the burn center? Did she go in for some kind of treatment much later??
If this was all going on, the place would have been chaotic. Surely whatever supervisor was around would have been called.
You don’t get admitted to a burn center for non-emergency issues. If there is followup work to be done long after the fact, you would have normal outpatient medicall treatment. These days people don’t get admitted very easily, but you can easily have all sorts of outpatient treatment.
It probably was chaotic ... so chaotic that they told her to move her car (her screaming was probably putting a damper on business, doncha know ... :-) ...).
Can you imagine someone being in a medical emergency in their car, on the street and then being told by the police or paramedics to move their car before they treat her medically! ... LOL ...
From what I’ve seen everywhere I’ve ever come upon it in public, is that the patient is always left “in place” until paramedics arrive and then they determine how to move the patient.
Chen's buddy was right there in the car....right there...and she called 911.
People are left in place only where they can't move on their own. Chen was not immobilized....
Please notice that there is absolutely no mention of any rescue arriving and transporting etc etc and we have not heard the 911 tape. Wait and see.
The paramedics don’t make that determination of whether someone can be moved or not ... until they have examined the situation and have taken into account all the relevant factors.
We don’t go to pimply-faced teenagers, working at a low-paying and dead-end job to get that type of determination ... :-) ...
That’s why 911 is called in the first place.
But there is mention of the facts that a low-end worker in the business made a medical determination that an ice-pack was proper medical care, and that the patient needed to move their car out of the way - treatment or no treatment, it didn’t matter - and that they (the business and/or workers) made the medical determination that a 911 call was not needed.
That’s enough for a jury to determine that the business is responsible for whatever happened, in the aftermath, in the way of medical treatment and should pay for all of it plus more.
Businesses like that need to be “put out of business”.
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