Appeals court: McDonald's not liable in strip-search lawsuit

<p>ATLANTA _ A federal appeals panel has upheld a decision to let McDonald's Corp. out of a lawsuit over an incident in which a south Georgia restaurant employee was strip-searched at the instructions of a caller posing as a police officer.</p><p>The three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling less than two weeks after hearing oral arguments in the case.</p><p>The 19-year-old female plaintiff was working at a franchisee-owned McDonald's in Hinesville. On Feb. 2, 2003, a caller claiming to be a police officer told a male maintenance worker the female employee was suspected of a crime and guided him through a body-cavity search of the plaintiff, according to a district court order summarizing the case.</p><p>A brief filed by the plaintiff says phone records indicate the call came from a Florida pay phone. The incident resembles others at restaurants around the nation. The cases have resulted in criminal prosecutions of restaurant employees and at least one man accused of making a call that set off a similar event.</p><p>Senior U.S. District Judge John F. Nangle allowed some of the plaintiff's claims to go forward against the franchisee, GWD Management Co., but granted summary judgment to McDonald's. The plaintiff had argued McDonald's should be liable because it knew of similar incidents but failed to warn the franchisee effectively. But Nangle found McDonald's neither completely controlled the Hinesville restaurant nor undertook a duty to protect the plaintiff.</p><p>Senior Judge Peter T. Fay and Judges Stanley F. Birch Jr. and William H. Pryor Jr. of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday affirmed Nangle's actions in a two-paragraph unsigned opinion.</p><p>Attorney Mary Ann B. Oakley, who made the argument for McDonald's, said the panel's concise and unanimous opinion "seems to say that it was pretty clear-cut.".</p><p>Patrick T. O'Connor, who argued for the plaintiff, said Friday the case would proceed against GWD but a further appeal over McDonald's liability was "unlikely."</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x1cff500)</p>