This particular case will be settled out of court I believe. Guy sounds like he has a pretty good case.

RIVERTON, Utah - A Utah man is suing McDonald's and Swire Coca-Cola after he allegedly had his drink spiked at a McDonald's with the heroin substitute Suboxone, according to KSTU.

In a complaint filed in Utah's Third Judicial District Court, the plaintiff Trevor Walker alleges that his diet coke was spiked on Aug. 12, 2016, at a McDonald's drive-thru in Riverton.

According to the complaint, Walker and his family went through the drive-thru, where they ordered two happy meals, two chicken sandwiches, and two Diet Cokes.

Walker drank the beverage as he and his family went home, the complaint stated. While watching his children, Walker said that his fingers became non-responsive, and he began to lose feeling in his arms and legs.

“My life and being here is the biggest miracle of the whole situation," Walker told KSTU. “As I started to shift my body, I started to sense almost like a lapse in time, like between the time I would move my hands there was a delay.”

The complaint said that during the incident, Walker sent the following text messages to his wife:

Text No. 1: “Something is vey (sic) wrong with me. I am having sensations in my arms and everything is moving slowly. I’m feeling scared. I don’t know what to do.”

Text No. 2: “I’m so scared I’m trying to be calm. I need you.”

Soon after sending the texts, the complaint alleges that Walker "blacked out," and fell onto a nearby table and collapsed onto the floor. Walker's wife came home, and he was taken to the emergency room.


Figure 1 - Rachelle's Diet Coke above,
Trevor's below
July 31, 2018

While at the hospital, the complaint stated that Walker's wife compared her Diet Coke to his, and noticed that his drink had, "speckles and a film on the surface—a fact that Trevor (Walker) was not aware of due to the lid placed by McDonald’s on the drink."

Walker's wife called the Unified Police Department and reported the suspicious drink. The plaintiff said that police responded to the hospital and took the drink for testing at the Utah State Crime Lab.

The complaint said that the Utah State Crime Lab confirmed the drink contained a heroin substitute called Suboxone, that is made with buprenorphine and naloxone. Suboxone is sold as a film that dissolves in the mouth.

"The drug negatively interacted with Mr. Walker’s medication, causing him to lose feeling in his arms and legs, lose the ability to walk, and eventually lose consciousness," the complaint stated. Walker's urine tested positive for buprenorphine, according to the suit.

McDonald's is accused in the complaint of failing to preserve the video recording of the drive-thru area where the alleged drink spiking took place, by deleting the video.

Walker demanded a trial by jury in the complaint and sought relief for damages.

https://wgntv.com/2018/08/01/m...spiked-with-opiates/
LINK:

There’s a lot more to the story than this article states.

At first I was skeptical, but these other facts have come out:

- The alleged perp is the store manager’s brother.
- The alleged perp had made several “drug related” posts on social media.
- The alleged perp had made several derogatory posts on social media towards customers.
- The alleged perp had made posts on social media about tinkering with customers’ orders in the past.
- When police first asked for video, the manager (alleged perp’s brother) gave footage from the wrong day to police.
- When the police realized this and went back to get the correct footage, it had been “mysteriously deleted.”
- The manager and the alleged perp quit their jobs shortly after the incident, and all the previously mentioned social media posts were deleted.

I can see the McDs suit, but the one against the bottler should be thrown out. Their bag of diet coke mix in that machine had nothing to do with it or everyone's diet coke served from that bag of concentrate would have been tainted.

Why is this not a criminal case?

quote:

Originally posted by Graniteguy:
Why is this not a criminal case?

If that happened to my family it might be a homicide case.

quote:

I can see the McDs suit, but the one against the bottler should be thrown out.

I agree. I suspect McDonald's insurer will pay, and it would be nice if they would go after the responsible parties. They won't.

wife eats sandwich but doesn't drink any of her diet coke? Wife then leaves to go somewhere and husband has medical emergency. Wife comes back and either takes husband to the ER or calls an ambulance. No matter which method of transport, wife carries both diet cokes to the ER. Neither drink has much gone.

While husband is in ER, wife removes lid from husbands drink and notices something foreign and calls police. Before the police get there she takes a picture of both drinks?

Does anything about this seem weird?

Not weird to me. My ex-wife doesn’t drink soda but I sometimes do and so whenever we’d go to fast food we’d typically get two drinks since the cost of a meal isn’t much more than just a burger and fries alone. Then I’d drink both drinks.

quote:

Originally posted by Strambo:
I can see the McDs suit, but the one against the bottler should be thrown out. Their bag of diet coke mix in that machine had nothing to do with it or everyone's diet coke served from that bag of concentrate would have been tainted.

I'm sure they were included as part of the chain of commerce/distribution.
Their liability should be zero since their involvement didn't cause any harm.

If ferinstance you buy and use a SCUBA dive computer and get bent following it's advice, the manufacturer, distributor and seller are all 'shotgunned' by the suit.

Very strange, wife has the foresight to take the drinks with her to the hospital, does some NCIS bullshit and calls cops.