my 3 year old daughter 2nd degree burns from dairy queen gravy

[cherie26]

a few months ago my daughter and i went to the dairy queen drive thru in sanford, nc. she got a kids meal with chicken strips and the gravy dipping sauce that is offered with it.The gravy was so hot she dropped it in her lap and it burned her. therewere no napkins to wipe her so i took her inside.the girl at the window was told she was burned but still no one even came to the bathroom to check on her.i finally had to tell my 9 yr old daughter to find the manager.2 people came and one was rude and walked out.did not take any info or anything.i want to stop this from happening to any other children if possible,resulted in burning the skin off in 2 places 1 about 2 to 3 inches long and blistered about an inch or 2 high.went to e.r. and doctor.has scarring.can anyone help me?

 

[lawrat]

was so hot she dropped it in her lap


It must have been on her lap already. I don't think she is completely at fault; after all, she is a little girl.

The best thing to do is to go see a lawyer and see what the possible outcomes could be. Ranging anything from no recovery to the mcdonald's hot coffee experience.

www.attorneypages.com

 

[maryp]

I'm just thinking out loud here, but if this product was purchased at a drive thru, either the parent or someone else in the car must have handed the gravy to the child.

We would expect hot food, whether purchased at a drive thru or at a sit down restaurant, to be exactly that - piping hot. The responsibility is on us as parents and carers to ensure that any hot food purchased for a child isn't so hot as to cause burning.

However, I'm very sorry your little tot was hurt and I would certainly have been more than cross at the apparent indifference shown by the employees.

 

[HomeGuru]

Here is my opinion.
The DQ worker put the entire kids meal box in the microwave to heat the chicken stips up. Unfortunately, the box also included the dipping sauce which because of the liquid state, became heated well over the normal F temperature. It may or may not have been company policy to heat the sauce and I am pretty sure the sauce does not need to be heated proir to consumption. So if the sauce did not need to be heated, the employee made a mistake. If the DQ company policy required heating of the sauce, the workers should have felt the sauce container by a hand touch AND also mentioned to the customer a word of caution as the sauce may be hot.
It is not the norm for restaurants to heat up happy meal sauces knowing that kids are going to be consuming the sauce. Therefore under the common or prudent man (or woman) theory, the parents did not have the obligation to feel, check out or test the sauce prior to the kids eating it. The parents had every right to expect the sauce to be room temperature or at least under scalding temperature.
All the fast food places that I know of prohibit the heating via microwave oven, the sauces because some containers have a metallic removable covering (which should not be microwaved due to metal) and also there is no sure fire way to test the F temperature of the actual liquid contents without breaking the packaging.
In summary, it is my opinion that the cook employee did not follow proper protocol and was negligent by heating the sauce. In addition, even after the sauce was heated, no employee notified the customers that the sauce was or could be hot especially with the knowledge that the sauce was for a kids meal.

Disclaimer: Notwithstanding my comments noted above, DQ still serves my favorite ice cream. That cone with the ice cream and chocolate dip is a winner.

 

[maryp]

The legalities of this may be as you state, I'm not qualified to dispute them, nor would I want to.

Firstly, may I state that none of this is said to embarrass or point a finger at Cherie26 - we've all been there and there's nothing worse than a 3 year old screaming their lungs out because they're hungry.

The general point I was making was that as parents, there is an unquestionable responsibility to ensure that we never place our children in harms way, irrespective of what the vendor claims, i.e. the food isn't too hot, there aren't any small bones etc. etc.

In preparing a meal for a child (and remember, this is only a 3 year old), you'd check that it wasn't too hot, you'd cut it up into small pieces and you'd sit there to ensure that they wouldn't keep stuffing it in as toddlers are prone to do and end up choking. This is especially true when dining out. A small child doesn't have the ability to evaluate the situation - they're hungry and here's food! That's what Mum and Dad are there for, it's their responsibility.

I hope the situation is as you state and that the parent is able to win compensation for the pain and suffering of his/her 2 year old but it still doesn't escape the fact that they themselves had an obligation to ensure that what they were giving their toddler, irrespective of the claim of Dairy Queen, wasn't going to cause them harm.

You know, it's becoming increasingly evident that it's easier to blame someone else - especially when there's money involved for not taking responsibility for the most precious of gifts - our own children.