Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

If you had a severe allergy to cheese and ordered a hamburger from a restaurant which commonly serves them with cheese wouldn’t the obvious thing to do be to look at the hamburger before eating it? Would you really trust the employees of a fast food restaurant regardless of whether they said there was cheese present?

The Charlston Daily Mail reports on a case where someone with an allergy to cheese ordered two Quarterpounders, stipulating that they be without cheese:

Jeromy did his part to make it known he didn’t want cheese on the hamburgers because he is allergic, Houston said.

He told a worker through the ordering speaker and then two workers face-to-face at the pay and pick-up windows that he couldn’t eat cheese, Houston said.

“By my count, he took at least five independent steps to make sure that thing had no cheese on it,” Houston said. “And it did and almost cost him his life.”

After getting the food, the three drove to Clarksburg and started to eat the food in a darkened room where they were going to watch a movie, Houston said.

Jeromy took one bite and started having the reaction, Houston said. One of the three immediately called the McDonald’s to let restaurant employees know they had messed up the order, but had to cut the call short when Jeromy started having a bad reaction, Houston said.

McDonalds offered to pay his medical expenses. Jeromy and those who allegedly risked their lives to get him to the hospital are suing for $10 million. McDonalds might share some blame, but I cannot help but wonder why he didn’t simply look at the hamburger first. It might be different if we were talking about a difficult to find ingredient, but it would be obvious if cheese was present. I’ve experienced numerous errors in take out orders, and would certainly pay extremely close attention if it was literally a matter of life and death.

It sounds rather suspicious that the hamburgers were immediately taken into a dark room. Q&O and Sister Toldjah suspect a scam. I’d be curious as to what types of reactions he had in the past. Reactions milk products are not usually life threatening, but if he had any clue that he risked a life threatening reaction it is more questionable if he would have risked this. Anaphylaxis just isn’t very fun.

It certainly is possible that it is a scam. I was peripherally involved in a scam of this nature years ago. I had a diabetic patient who was going to the Emergency Room with severely uncontrolled diabetes on a frequent basis. There was no rational explanation for why her sugar was getting this far out of control other than for intentionally causing this to occur. Incidentally, the patient was unemployed and received one hundred percent medical coverage through Medicare and Medicaid and therefore had no financial losses from these hospitalizations.

I received the answer to this puzzle after she had her records released to an attorney and I discussed the matter with the attorney. The attorney informed me that before the first incident the patient had purchased what was labeled a sugar free soft drink but it actually contained sugar. She claims that this resulted in a case of diabetic ketoacidosis.

The patient sought out the attorney to sue for damages. The patient had even saved a small amount of the drink to prove it contained sugar, and had the receipt. This all sounded too suspicious of a person trying to fabricate a case, and the attorney initially had little interest. The attorney tried to get rid of her by saying that there would only be a case if she had repeated or more long standing damage.

The patient took that as guidance of how to develop a case. If she needed long standing damage, she made sure that she was repeatedly admitted in diabetic ketoacidosis.

As I advised the attorney, this made absolutely no sense. It is perhaps possible, but very doubtful, that drinking a single bottle of pop with sugar could have triggered a case of ketoacidosis if her sugar was already elevated. Even if we accepted this, there was no possible way that this episode could have had any bearing on subsequent events.

I happened to run into the attorney months later when she was representing another patient. I don’t recall the exact amount, but I found that the soft drink manufacturer did settle for an amount which made this scam worth the patient’s efforts. It turned out to be a successful scam.

The fact that one person pulled a scam proves nothing about the person in this case. If his account is truthful I could see granting him something beyond his medical expenses–perhaps a small monetary award accompanied by a lecture to show some personal responsibility in such situations.