THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 18, 1995 TAG: 9502180517
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
A customer who says he found two bloody adhesive bandages inside a hamburger after eating half of the hamburger is suing a local McDonald's restaurant.
Joseph L. 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 W. 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.
Later, the employee's blood was tested for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and for hepatitis and other diseases, but 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.
Lawsuits alleging tainted food from restaurants or supermarkets are not unusual. About one or two a month are filed in Virginia Beach and Norfolk courts, often when a customer bites into something hard and breaks a tooth.
It is rare, however, for someone to complain of finding a bloody bandage.
Duncan's lawsuit accuses PDS Inc. of negligence, breach of warranty and breach of duty to sell unadulterated food. The company has 21 days from the day it receives the lawsuit to reply.
KEYWORDS: LAWSUIT by CNB