Day 086 - 09 Feb 95 - Page 48
1 employee of McDonald's Restaurant in Silver Spring,
2 Maryland, but was unknown to the management of that
3 McDonald's Restaurant as a passive carrier of typhoid,
4 prepared a shrimp salad which caused the customers who
5 consumed it to contract typhoid. McDonald's paid the
6 medical bills and related claims of these customers because
7 among other things, strict liability would apply to any
8 claims made under Maryland law even without a finding of
9 negligence. McDonald's also provided treatment at its own
10 expense for the employee over a several month period."
11
12 The question I want to put to you is that you hear things,
13 presumably, at McDonald's about the Company's history?
14 A. Indeed.
15
16 Q. Presumably, you hear about things to do with the company
17 history that is relevant to your particular job?
18 A. Indeed.
19
20 Q. People will say: "Oh, you are in that department, do you
21 know about such and such that happened?"
22 A. Yes.
23
24 Q. So why the hell do you not know about these
25 important ------
26
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, no, Mr. Morris. Mr. Morris, just put it
28 as a sensible question.
29
30 MR. MORRIS: Why do you not know -- sorry, I was just getting a
31 bit carried away.
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Calm down. You have managed to get through
34 98 per cent of this trial so far in a perfectly civilised
35 way.
36
37 MR. MORRIS: I know, it is just very frustrating sometimes.
38 (To the witness): Does McDonald's have a blind spot about
39 anything that is critical in the company?
40 A. No, anything that is critical, I would say, is very
41 much in focus and at the forefront of everyone's mind. I
42 think I may be excused from not knowing about a shrimp
43 salad in 1987, or whenever it was. It is a long time ago.
44 We do not serve shrimps over here in McDonald's, and
45 perhaps that is why it was not a cause for is of any
46 concern.
47
48 The other matter is that any allegation of food poisoning
49 over here or any incident that comes to mind -- sorry, any
50 incident that comes from Environmental Health Officers is
51 of great interest to us, and, you know, we investigate and
52 we try to make our systems much better.
53
54 But if you, with all your digging around, you can just come
55 up with a shrimp salad in 1987 in an incident in Oregon,
56 plus an incident in Preston as the only three things that
57 may possibly be associated with McDonald's and food
58 poisoning, it would suggest that our system itself is
59 intact, it works and that the measures that I take in my
60 capacity and my predecessors, the measures that they have
