Posted on 07/31/2014 4:24:40 AM PDT by markomalley
A Brazos County jury on Wednesday awarded a $27 million in a lawsuit against McDonald’s relating to the 2012 deaths of two Blinn College students. Jurors found McDonald’s negligence to be 97 percent responsible for the deaths of Denton Ward, 18, of Flower Mound, and Lauren Bailey Crisp, 19, of Flower Mound, both of whom died in the early morning hours of Feb. 18, 2012.
The remaining 3 percent of liability was laid on the men who violently attacked Ward and his friend, Tanner Giesen, 21, in the parking lot of the McDonald’s at 801 University Drive.
The jury’s verdict reflects the argument plaintiffs’ attorneys made from the start of the seven-day trial: Had Ward and Giesen not been assaulted at the McDonald’s, the car accident that occurred 11 minutes later while Samantha Bean, another friend, was attempting to get the men to the hospital would not have happened.
And because of a well-documented police record of fights and assaults at the University Drive McDonald’s in the months leading up to the incident, store managers and corporate employees had a duty to hire security to protect patrons.
It was never disputed during the trial that Crisp died in the car accident, but jurors did hear conflicting conclusions from expert witnesses as to Ward’s cause of death.
Two experts who testified for the plaintiffs asserted Ward was killed from injuries suffered while being punched, kicked and stomped on at the McDonald’s, while an expert for the defense — who was the only witness called on by McDonald’s — insisted Ward was fatally injured in the car wreck.
“The thing that sets all of this in motion, and that’s the cause test, is McDonald’s,” said Chris Hamilton, lead plaintiff attorney, in closing arguments.
Hamilton and his co-counsels, Robert Langdon and Jon Miller, spent four days putting on evidence, with much of it focused on establishing a pattern of violence at the McDonald’s and showing the subsequent lack of action taken by company employees.
Carlos Butler, a former McDonald’s general manager and local hip-hop artist, said in a video deposition played for the jury that he was unaware of any of the 20-plus incidents police responded to from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. on the weekends in the 11 months leading up to Ward and Giesen being attacked even though he had been the one to call 911 in at least one instance.
Jurors also saw video testimony from several McDonald’s corporate employees who denied having any knowledge of security issues at the location across from Texas A&M.
“It’s not about what [McDonald’s] knew, it’s about what they didn’t want to know,” Hamilton told jurors. “Their defense is, ‘I didn’t know anything about it.’”
McDonald’s attorneys Marshall Rosenberg and Paul Murphy argued the decisions made by the dead teens and their friends were what led to Crisp and Ward dying.
“Alcohol and consumption of alcohol by teenagers was the root cause,” Murphy said. “I’m not going to do a disservice to anyone and agree to some alternate reality.”
Prior to arriving at the McDonald’s, all four of the friends had been at Hurricane Harry’s drinking and left the bar in Ward’s 4Runner headed to McDonald’s.
Once they arrived, Ward and Giesen went in to use the restroom while Crisp and Bean went through the drive-thru to avoid the large crowd of people, according to testimony.
When the women rounded the corner of the drive-thru, they saw their friends getting beaten, which is when Crisp jumped out to grab Ward, her boyfriend, as Giesen was carried to the car by two unknown women and Bean hopped into the driver’s seat to try and get to the hospital.
In the minutes leading up to the accident, Bean had plenty of opportunity to stop and call for help, Murphy argued.
“They want you to get good and angry at McDonald’s, that’s it,” he said.
The lawsuit was filed by Ward’s mother, Denise Whitaker, and Crisp’s parents, Paul and Nicole Crisp, all of whom testified Friday about how their lives have been affected by the loss of their first-born children.
The jury awarded
$11 million to Whitaker and $11 million to the Crisps for past and future loss of companionship and mental anguish, in addition to $5 million for the pain and mental anguish suffered by Ward, money legally bound for Whitaker.
“This won’t bring the kids back, but it does validate how their parents felt in terms of McDonald’s responsibility,” Hamilton said after the verdict. “I will tell my kids if they go to a McDonald’s at night and they don’t see an off-duty police officer, don’t get out of the car.”
It’s expected McDonald’s will appeal the verdict.
Agreed! Let's hope they appeal and get a change of venue to someplace with country clubs and a golf course. (Those are "dog whistle" words...)
Damn, no more DOLLAR menu.
No, you f'in' morons, the thing that sets all of this in motion is feral youth.
I encourage McDonalds and all other restaurants in feral-youth infested areas to pull out. Screw 'em.
No.
Mickey D’s DID have something to do with this. Where was their security? Cops had been called to that location 20 previous times for instances like this.
Like what? If you live in a bad neighborhood is it your fault that thugs rob and murder people in your neighborhood? By your "logic" it is.
I thought Bryan / College Station was a lot smarter than that. WOW.
It will be overturned on appeal.
If I’m on your property (invited) and your dog attacks me - you are liable. If I’m at a business and they know that wall is dangerous and could fall and hurt someone - and it does - they are liable.
Granted McDonalds liabilty is nowhere near 27 million, but they did have a duty to provide for a safe and secure restaraunt.
Even to drunks, thugs and idiots.
(deliberately) False analogy. The thugs didn't belong to McD's. They weren't under the control of McD's AND McD's doesn't have the police power to arrst them and if McD's denies them service then they sue for discrimination. Sorry good buddy your theory dosn't hold up.
Agreed.
aka - Go for the deepest pockets possible and hit the mega-lottery.
***Yep, Jury saw free money***
This reminds me of something I read about ancient Greece.
A rich man could be arrested and tried by a jury of 1000 people. He was always found guilty as the Jury then got to divvy up the man’s riches between themselves.
Wonder if these jurors will get a piece of that McDonald’s award?
Pretty sad when Private Business’s have a “Legal Duty” to “Protect” it’s Customers but the POLICE DON’T??
Maybe we need a Constitutional Amendment guaranteeing “Equal Protection Under the LAW”.
This is a stupid award. The only thing good that could come out of this would be that all the stupid, feel good businesses can see the fallacy of having no weapons on property policies and put up signs saying you and your legal weapon are welcome. One CHL carrier could have stopped this assault.
Texas lawyers drove all the doctors away from Texas, after Texas tax payers paid to educate those doctors…until Rick Perry won the state house. I dread what happens when Greg Abbott becomes governor…one of the great things about Perry i that he’s not a &^%$ lawyer.
Well, Counselor Dingbat, the owners of the McD don’t “own” the criminals or have any control over them the way a dog owner owns a dog.
Texas has a law school on every city block!
Or a member of the jury pool
I say sue the corporations that banned guns on their property. To me, this creates an absolute liability on their part to protect everyone at the site, as they do not allow people to effectively protect themselves.
Beaten to Death at McDonald’s: A racial attack the media chose to ignore.
FrontPage Mag ^ | 08/20/2014 | David Paulin
Police were constantly responding to late-night fights, assaults, and disturbances among huge crowds that were mostly black – a problem one top police official called a “drain on resource.” Most of the reported incidents – some 200 in the three years preceding Ward and Crisp’s deaths – involved black-on-black violence by gang bangers and, according to one police officer, members of black college fraternities. One police report described an unidentified man’s head getting bashed against a curb. White patrons appeared to be especially susceptible and at risk – and when they were attacked, the blows were particularly vicious. The hours of 2-to-3 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays were especially volatile, with at least a dozen fights and assaults reported during those hours in the year preceding Ward and Crisp’s deaths.
~snip~
For Ward and Giesen, the trouble started seconds after exiting McDonald’s front door. “You’re in the wrong neck of the woods, cowboys,” Giesen recalled a young black male saying.
Unwittingly, they’d blundered into a highly-charged situation. Shortly before they’d arrived, two black males had gotten into a loud argument inside the restaurant. A gun was brandished. But manager Lindsey Ives, a black woman, didn’t call the police. She told the men to take their dispute outside.
In an instant, a bloodthirsty mob was upon the college students.
~snip~
Why was University McDonald’s so popular among black gang bangers and black fraternity members? Carlos Butler, the outlet’s black general manager, could take credit for that. An aspiring hip-hop artist, he hosted large hip-hop concerts attracting some 1,500 people — and after those events many of the black hip-hoppers headed to University McDonald’s.
Interestingly, Butler told a police detective he always had “a lot of security” at his hip-hop events.
Yet at University McDonald’s, Butler had no off-duty police officer providing security — even on nights that the hip-hop and gangsta crowd showed up in large numbers.
Cost for an off-duty cop – a mere $100. Police had told Butler such a late-night security measure, in use at other nearby 24-hour outlets, could stop trouble before it started.
What does a settlement do?
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