ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 19, 1995                   TAG: 9502200063
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARC DAVIS LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                                 LENGTH: Medium


BLOODY BANDAGES IN BURGER, SUIT SAYS

A customer who says he found two bloody adhesive bandages inside a hamburger after eating half the sandwich is suing a local McDonald's restaurant.

Joseph Duncan, a 31-year-old Virginia Beach firefighter, claims he found the bandages stuck to a Quarter-Pounder Deluxe on Nov. 5 while eating at the McDonald's at 908 General Booth Blvd.

His lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Circuit Court, seeks $100,000 in damages from PDS Inc., which owns the restaurant.

The company's president, Paul Smith of Chesapeake, declined to comment Friday.

A photo of the hamburger filed with the lawsuit shows one of the bandage pads soaked with blood. The other is not visible.

``This wasn't just a little pin prick'' of blood, said Duncan's attorney, Reeves Mahoney. ``That's a fairly well-soaked Band-Aid. ... He never chewed on the Band-Aid, but he was concerned about the Band-Aid contaminating the food product.''

Duncan became sick and threw up immediately after finding the bandages, Mahoney said.

Since the incident, Mahoney said, McDonald's has acknowledged that the bandages came from an employee, but it is not known how they got into the hamburger.

The employee's blood has been tested for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and for hepatitis and other diseases, and the test was negative, Mahoney said. Nevertheless, Duncan ``still harbors a dreadful fear of AIDS. ... As an emergency medical technician, he has been trained to fear blood,'' the lawyer said.

Compounding Duncan's fear, Mahoney said, is the fact that he believes his father died from salmonella poisoning. ``He lived in fear of food-borne illness,'' the lawyer said.



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