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SOUTHLAKE, Texas - A Dallas Cowboys wide receivers-passing game coach filed a personal injury lawsuit Thursday against a McDonald's restaurant in Texas, alleging that his wife and au pair found a dead rat in their take-out salad in June, court documents show.
Todd Haley, his wife, Christine Haley, and their au pair, Kathryn Kelley, are suing the restaurant and its franchise owner, Ken Lobato and KBL Group, for a minimum of $1.7 million in physical and mental pain and anguish, alleging that the restaurant was negligent in preparing the salad and failed to have safeguards against rodents.
"We haven't seen the litigation, so we can't respond to the claims," Lobato said in a prepared statement. "Nothing is more important to us than the safety and well-being of our customers. We maintain the strictest quality standards."
The plaintiffs could not be reached for comment.
According to the lawsuit filed in Tarrant County, Christine Haley ordered $14 worth of food, including the salad, at the drive-through at the restaurant in Southlake, a suburb of Fort Worth, on June 5. She took the food home, where she and Kelley began eating out of the salad bowl. The women ate a few bites before they uncovered what they later determined to be a stiff young roof rat on its back, with its whiskers intact and its mouth agape. The women gagged and vomited repeatedly, the lawsuit alleges.
Christine Haley telephoned Lobato to complain, and he drove to her Southlake home to see the dead rodent, the lawsuit said.
Lobato demanded the rat, the suit says, but the women refused to give it up. Subsequent complaints to the Southlake McDonald's and corporate offices have "fallen on deaf ears," the lawsuit states.
Common throughout Texas, roof rats are about a foot long with long, scaly tails, according to the Natural Science Laboratory at Texas Tech University. The rats frequent building rafters and inhabit grocery stores in search of food. They also transmit diseases such as bubonic plague and endemic typhus, according to the laboratory.
The women say they are haunted by this knowledge and fear that they may have caught a disease.
"This tremendous horror translates into continuing gastric disaster," the suit states.
The women have had difficulty keeping food down and can no longer go out to eat, the suit states. They are forced to prepare their food "from scratch . . . allowing themselves to see each ingredient placed in the dish they are cooking," the suit states.
Haley was breastfeeding her 6-month-old when she ate the salad and fears she may have passed the child a disease through her breast milk. She switched the child to formula, which caused her "mental anguish," the suit states.
While neither woman has tested positive for any disease, both have been in counseling and anticipate about a year more of therapy, the suit states.
Todd Haley has suffered the "loss of consortium" - the companionship and support of his wife - the lawsuit states.
Lobato said the franchise is taking the complaint seriously and conducting a full investigation.
"In my years as an owner-operator, I've never seen anything like this," he said.
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(c) 2006, Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.
