You don’t deserve a break in your tooth today

Injuries suffered after biting into fast food may leave you in pain — and without any way of recovering damages.

Or so a Worcester man discovered recently.

He drove his truck up to the take-out window of a McDonald’s restaurant and ordered an extra-value meal. Back on the road, he bit into a quarter- pounder burger and crunched down on something hard. Sensing he was about to gag, he spit the entire mouthful of food out the window and continued on his way to meet his boss for a fishing expedition.

The next day, the man began to feel tooth pain and sought treatment. He learned from his dentist that one of his wisdom teeth was cracked and would have to be extracted.

The man notified the restaurant about the incident and became upset when McDonald’s refused to settle. As a result, he sued the fast-food giant for negligence and breach of warranty, hoping that those Golden Arches might yield some gold in damages.

Sadly for him, a trial judge found in favor of McDonald’s — a decision seconded by the state Appeals Court in the case of Cotter v. McDonald’s Restaurants of Massachusetts, Inc.

“To prove his negligence claim,” the Appeals Court said, “[the consumer] was required to show that the acts and omissions of McDonald’s, more likely than not, caused his injuries. [Likewise] to [recover on] his breach of warranty claims, he was required to prove that McDonald’s defective food product contained an injury-causing substance that a consumer would not have ordinarily expected to find.”

In the Appeals Court’s opinion, the consumer had no chance of proving either of his claims.

“The only evidence of the nature of the substance,” the court said, “came from [the consumer] himself, who described it as hard and small like a BB. [He] admitted that he had no idea what the substance was. Although he felt it, he never saw it. He could not describe its shape or provide any additional details about it. The substance could have been anything — gravel, a bone, or a piece of [the consumer’s] tooth or filling that did not originate in McDonald’s food product.”

Because the consumer will be unable to prove that McDonald’s sold him “defective, dangerous and unsafe food” in breach of a warranty or that McDonald’s actions caused his injuries — two essential elements of the customer’s legal claims — the trial court, the appellate court concluded, properly found in favor of McDonald’s.

— Paul Lamoureux

paul.lamoureux@exhibitAnews.com