Featured Image Credit: News 4 (WOAI) San Antonio/Google Maps
Topics: Money, Food and Drink, US News
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: Money, Food and Drink, US News
A Texas jury has ordered a restaurant to pay over $2 million to a woman who filed a lawsuit accusing the chain of not warning how hot its sauce was.
On May 19, 2023, Genesis Monita and her sister visited Bill Miller BAR-B-Q in in the 8800 bock of SW Loop 410 in San Antonio.
The 19-year-old allegedly ended up suffering a second-degree burn after dropping one of the chain's sauces on her lap, and accused the restaurant of making the sauce too hot and not having sufficiently warned her about its temperature.
The pair reportedly pulled into the restaurant's drive-thru area and ordered four breakfast tacos before parking up in the lot to eat them.
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Monita reportedly reached for a pot of the restaurant's barbecue sauce but dropped it - allegedly as a result of its temperature - with the sauce ending up on her legs and allegedly causing her to suffer a second-degree burn.
Monita subsequently filed a lawsuit against the restaurant chain.
The lawsuit alleged the sauce was 'served at 189 degrees' on the day Monita visited the restaurant with her sister and 'when Monita took the container of bar-b-que sauce it was so hot that it caused her to drop the container and spill the sauce on her right thigh causing a second-degree burn,' as stated by KSAT.
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The lawsuit further claimed that the sauce was 54 degrees higher than the state’s guidelines, which is reportedly 135 degrees, and that the restaurant should've warned her it was hot.
Bill Miller's sauce policy also reportedly states the sauce is served at 165 degrees although, the Express News reported - as quoted by Law & Crime - with attorney for the chain, Barry McClenahan, saying the sauce is served at a minimum of 165 degrees as required by food safety rules.
McClenahan argued: "At Bill Miller’s, the sauce is always hot, and our customers know that. And that’s why it’s hot. What would we have warned Ms. Monita of that she did not already know?"
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The lawsuit alleged Monita suffered not just physical but mental pain and sort damages for lost wages, medical and psychological expenses.
And on Friday (January 17), a jury ruled in favor of Monita.
Fox 4 News reports a jury of six people found the restaurant to be 'grossly negligent' in the incident involving Monita.
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The restaurant chain has subsequently been ordered to pay a whopping $2.8 million dollars - $900,000 for mental and physical pain, over $25,000 for medical expenses and $1.9 million in punitive damages.
Monita's lawyer, Lawrence Morales, told KSAT: "We feel very pleased by the results of this case. Genesis just wanted justice."
UNILAD has contacted Bill Miller Bar-B-Q for further comment.