Fast food restaurants are magnets for those looking to scam some big cash.
From disagreements over napkins to wrong orders and contest crime rings, here are some of
the worst offenders when it comes to fast food scams and hustles that totally failed.
In 2003, two teenagers tried to sue McDonald's for making them obese.
That's right, Quarter Pounders don't make you skinny.
According to the New York Times, Jazlyn Bradley and Ashley Pelman were regulars at two McDonald's
locations in the Bronx, and argued that they weren't provided with, quote, "sufficient
information about the health risks" linked to a diet of Big Macs and fries.
The judge ultimately ruled the two teens were responsible for their own diet choices, saying,
"Nobody is forced to eat at McDonald's.
This opinion is guided by the principle that legal consequences should not attach to the
consumption of hamburgers and other fast-food fare unless consumers are unaware of the dangers
of eating such food."
At the time, McDonald's patrons had to visit the company's website for nutritional information.
The restaurant began posting calorie totals for all of its items on the in-store menus
back in 2012.
So now there's really no excuse for playing dumb with the calories in your order of fries.
In 2014, a California man brought a $1.5 million lawsuit against the Golden Arches because
he was allegedly only given one napkin with his meal.
According to Law Street, Webster Lucas said that when he asked for more napkins, the manager
refused and told him he'd already had enough.
That's when things got ugly.
Lucas, who is African-American, claimed that the manager, who is Hispanic, showed prejudice
towards him.
Lucas told him,
"I didn't come here to argue over napkins.
I came here to eat."
Which is when the manager allegedly mumbled something about, quote, "you people."
Lucas emailed the restaurant's general manager who apologized and offered free burgers — and
presumably unlimited napkins — but it wasn't enough to heal Lucas' wounds.
He later wrote,
"I am unable to work because of the undue mental anguish and the intentional infliction
of emotional distress cause by your employee."
And then he filed his $1.5 million lawsuit.
The lawsuit was dismissed in October 2014, but that wasn't the worst of it for Lucas.
The case landed him on California's Vexatious Litigant List, prohibiting him from filing
lawsuits for a period of time.
If you've ordered a cheeseburger more than a few times in your life, you probably know
that at some restaurants, the cheese costs extra — while at others, it's included.
You probably shrug at the minimal charge, mostly because it's worth it to have your
sandwich cheesed or un-cheesed to your liking.
Florida couple Cynthia Kissner and Leonard Werner, however, don't take cheese charges
so lightly.
"Two McDonald's customers are suing the chain for $5 million over unwanted quarter pounder
cheese."
According to Fox News, in 2018, the couple claimed that they had been charged the full
price for a Quarter Pounder with cheese, even though they ordered it without cheese.
In their minds, since McDonald's charges 30 cents more for a cheeseburger than a hamburger,
they had been ripped off by the Golden Arches and were entitled to, well, $5 million for
their alleged "suffered injury."
Despite their paper-thin argument that McDonald's had become, quote, "unjustly enriched by these
practices," the U.S. District Judge dismissed the lawsuit and called it "absurd."
The judge explained to Kissner and Werner that it's up to the customer to tap into the
common sense part of their brain when ordering off the menu.
One of the strangest cases of a person trying to pull a fast one on a fast food chain is
the 2005 chili finger incident cooked up by Anna Ayala.
"I usually crack all my crackers and just put them in there, mix it all around, and
started eating, eating and eating, the way usually people eat."
According to NBC, the woman was eating at a San Jose, California Wendy's when she claimed
that she took a bite of chili that included a partially-cooked piece of human finger.
"As we started investigating, poking it, other people too, that's when we find that there's
something that looks like a nail."
She pretty much ruined the idea of ever ordering Wendy's chili again for customers everywhere,
and the story reportedly cost the fast food chain an estimated loss of $21 million.
However, Ayala couldn't pull off the ruse and eventually confessed that her husband
had gotten the severed finger from a coworker who had lost it in a factory accident.
Ayala said that she cooked the ring finger herself before dropping the digit into her
bowl of chili and crying wolf.
She was sentenced to nine years in prison — though she served only four — and was
fittingly banned from Wendy's for life.
Back in 2005, Jeromy Jackson attempted to become a multimillionaire when he sued McDonald's
for putting cheese on his burgers.
And clearly the man had a go-big-or-go-home attitude, because he sued Mickey D's for a
cool $10 million.
According to West Virginia Record, Jackson said in his case that he repeatedly told the
McDonald's staff not to put cheese on his two Quarter Pounders because he was allergic.
Maybe Jackson annoyed the McDonald's employees or maybe it was an honest mistake, but whatever
the case, his burger had cheese and he had to be rushed to a hospital because of an allergic
reaction.
It didn't take long for the story to raise suspicious eyebrows, with one Overlawyered
opinion piece saying,
"So apparently the 'multiple preventive steps' he took 'to assure his food did not contain
cheese' did not include looking at the damn sandwich before eating it."
As you might have guessed, Jackson didn't get $10 million and the case was eventually
dismissed.
One would imagine that when you're doing hard time, you have a lot of time to simply sit
and think.
You may even have a brilliant idea that the rest of the world would rejoice over and shower
you with riches… if only you weren't behind bars.
That's the predicament of Gary Cole, a super-max prison inmate in Colorado who claims it was
he, not some hot shot Yum Brands product development scientist, who thought of using Doritos as
taco shells.
According to the Dallas Observer, Cole is serving 25 years, but more importantly, he
tried suing Taco Bell for stealing his Doritos Locos Tacos idea.
Cole said he mailed his attorney a notarized document of the idea in 2006 and upon learning
of the Doritos Locos Tacos, he demanded an FBI investigation.
Spoiler alert: it didn't happen.
Cole then contacted the IRS about the matter, telling them,
"A check was made out to a person for a large amount by Taco Bell, Frito Lay, and [Pepsi]
for an idea or invention that was submitted to them by theft and fraud."
He demanded the IRS give him this person's name and address.
That didn't' happen either.
Cole decided to represent himself, but the case was dismissed under the "three strikes"
rule that prohibits inmates from filing civil lawsuits if they've already filed three or
more that have been dismissed while incarcerated.
Apparently, he was passing his time in prison by filing frivolous lawsuits.
If you've ordered a meal from a fast food place and it looked exactly as appetizing
as in the commercial, consider it a miracle.
The chances of snagging $20 million for a sad piece of junk food, however, are so slim
that literally falling into a pit of hundred dollar bills is probably more likely.
Anna Wurtzburger of Hopewell Junction, New York, brought a $20 million lawsuit against
KFC for not serving her a bucket that was "overflowing with chicken," despite seeing
said bucket in KFC's commercials.
According to the Poughkeepsie Journal, Wurtzburger didn't just file her lawsuit after buying
a single bucket, because that would be an amateur move — and she wanted her case to
be bulletproof.
Nope, Wurtzburger said she made "multiple purchases" at her local KFC in 2016 after
being sold KFC's commercial lies.
According to her legal complaint,
"[When she] received the bucket of chicken there were only eight pieces of chicken in
it.
There was not enough chicken in the bucket to fill up the bucket.
[...] [The ads] falsely stated that 'the meal could feed your whole family.'"
She argued that if it's going to overflow with just eight pieces a smaller bucket should
have been used and that KFC owed her a check for $20 million.
A New York judge granted KFC's request to dismiss the case for Wurtzburger failing to
provide real evidence that a violation of the law had taken place.
Never mind the fact that Subway was selling full-sized hoagies for five bucks and losing
money by doing so — some of those sandwiches weren't precisely 12 inches.
Thanks to a teen with a tape measure and too much free time, Subway's slightly less than
a full foot sandwich spawned a lawsuit for half a million.
According to Fox News, the whole fiasco started in 2013, when a teen exposed Subway's devious
practices of selling 11-inch subs masquerading as foot-longs by posting a photo to Facebook.
It didn't take long for some attorneys from all over the U.S. to jump on the opportunity
and start measuring subs from various Subway restaurants.
They all came up short and Subway nearly had to hand over $525,000 in legal fees after
promising their breads would be a more uniform size.
]"If they're following the baking procedures they should get the 12 inches out of the oven
every single time."
The chain would have had to cough up the hefty fees if Judge Diane Sykes had not thrown out
the settlement.
Sykes noted that even with new protocols put into place by Subway, there was still the
real possibility that some sandwiches could be shorter than advertised since bread tends
to change shape when it bakes.
Like so many of the cases examined here, the judge chalked it up to the responsibility
of customers using common sense.
"I think size matters."
Shouldn't a glazed doughnut from Krispy Kreme be free of controversy?
Apparently not, because Jason Saidian of California filed a lawsuit against the doughnut chain
for false advertising with the berries — or lack thereof — used in the doughnuts he
ordered.
According to the Winston-Salem Journal, in the suit, Saidian said he purchased raspberry
Krispy Kreme doughnuts because:
"Raspberries are a rich source of Vitamin C, Vitamin K, potassium and dietary fiber
[…] and help fight against cancer, heart and circulatory disease, and age-related decline."
If you need a moment to process the stupidity of his health strategy, we understand.
Saidian wanted $5 million in damages and "disgorging of profits made from" the $1.09 doughnuts.
Krispy Kreme's attorneys responded to Saidian's lawsuit with a tongue lashing, telling him,
"No reasonable consumer would expect a doughnut to deliver the same level of antioxidants,
for example, as green tea.
[...] Consumers also understand that doughnuts are desserts."
Perhaps the sugar high from the doughnuts wore off and Saidian realized his case would
get him laughed out of court, because it was voluntarily dismissed.
Between 1989 and 2001, former Georgia police officer Jerome Jacobson stole more than $24
million in prizes from McDonald's after taking a job with the company as a private security
officer.
According to Fox News, Jacobson was given the task of overseeing the prize stamp printing
process and thus knew how to access the winning stamps of the popular McDonald's Monopoly
game.
He started sending the winning game pieces to friends and family across the country and
would then take a cut of the winnings.
A tip-off in 2000 eventually brought it all crashing down, and Jacobson and several others
were arrested for mail fraud.
He was eventually given a McJail sentence of three years in prison and ordered to pay
back $12.5 million of the money he stole.
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