A Broward jury will soon determine how much money to award the family of a 4-year-old girl who received second-degree burns from a McDonald’s chicken nugget in 2019. The lawyers for the family are seeking $15 million.
That’s $5 million for the past and $10 million for the future.
“There is only one Olivia Caraballo,” Jordan Redavid, the attorney for the plaintiff, told the jury in his opening statement Tuesday, referring to the now 8-year-old girl. “There will only be one.”
Meanwhile, lawyers for McDonald’s argued that Olivia’s injury healed in three weeks. The scar the nugget left on her inner thigh is “approximately the size of a nickel,” defense attorney Jennifer Miller said in her opening statement, and causes no pain. A plastic surgeon estimated the cost of treating it to be a little less than $5,000.
A separate jury had decided in May that McDonald’s and its franchise operator were to blame for the girl’s injuries after the scalding Chicken McNugget fell on her lap during a family trip to a Tamarac McDonald’s drive-through.
Her mother, Philana Holmes, had testified that she bought Happy Meals for her son and daughter, handing the food to them in the back seat before driving away. At no point, she said, did McDonald’s warn her that the food might be unusually hot.
When her daughter began screaming in pain, Holmes pulled into a parking lot, where she noticed the burn. Pictures she took of the burn, and sound clips of Olivia’s screams, were shown and played in court again Tuesday, as they were in the May trial.
Lawyers for McDonald’s had argued that the food had to be hot to prevent salmonella poisoning and the nuggets were meant to be eaten, not pressed between a seat belt and human flesh for more than two minutes. After two days of testimony, the jury decided that McDonald’s and its franchise operator, Upchurch Foods, must pay damages to the family.
Now, a second jury must decide how much those damages should be, in a single number written on the verdict form.
On Tuesday, attorneys for the plaintiff rested their case after the jurors heard testimony from Olivia’s parents and an expert witness, Dr. Josh Carson, a former director of the University of Florida’s burn center who examined the wound.
The scar itself, red and blistering in 2019 — so painful that, her mother said, Olivia would wet herself rather than take her underwear off, for fear of touching it — has since faded into a small, raised, painless brown mark.
But it continues to cause emotional pain, Holmes testified. Olivia calls the scar her “nugget,” her mother said, and is now fixated on removing it.
Olivia is on the autism spectrum, which is why she will not testify herself, Redavid said. Though her parents are filing the case on her behalf, all of the money awarded is to go to Olivia.
Burn victims often experience psychological pain afterwards, their scar a reminder of the trauma, Carson said, regardless of how big it is.
“If it’s disturbing to [Olivia], size is not the be-all-end-all,” he said. “It’s that she knows it’s there.”
Olivia remembers the burn “like it was yesterday,” her father, Humberto Caraballo Estevez, testified.
Holmes took Olivia to the emergency room immediately after she was burned, as well as to a pediatrician, dermatologist and plastic surgeon in the days and months following.
The doctors suggested a variety of cures: topical ointments like Neosporin and silicone gels, which she used, as well as more invasive treatments like lasers, steroid injections and surgery, though none would fully remove the scar.
In cross-examination, lawyers for McDonald’s sought to show that treatments for the burn were not expensive relative to the $15 million, and that Olivia’s pain ended after the wound healed, pointing to several doctor’s appointments in which she did not report pain, according to medical records. She also never saw a counselor or psychologist specifically about the burn.
Olivia saw a Hollywood-based plastic surgeon hired by the defense, Dr. Yoav Barnavon, as part of a court-ordered examination earlier this month. His team measured the scar to be approximately 2½ centimeters by 1 centimeter. Barnavon is on staff at Joe DiMaggio Children’s hospital in Hollywood.
In testimony Tuesday, he said the total cost of a surgical “revision” of the scar would be $4,708.
The trial is about “fairness,” defense attorney Miller said in her opening statement.
“We’re not here to avoid any responsibility,” she added. “We’re here to ensure she is reasonably and fairly compensated under the law.”
The family’s lawyers argued that, if the scar serves as a permanent reminder of the chicken McNugget that burned her, a couple hundred dollars a day is not too much to ask in return.
“The verdict we’re asking for is not $15 million for 15 minutes,” Redavid told the jury. “It’s 15 million for the rest of her life.”
On Wednesday, the jury will hear from one more witness, another doctor testifying for the defense, before closing arguments.
