7 Wild and Unusual Fast-Food Scandals and Lawsuits

Fast-food restaurants are like the saloons of the Wild West. There are all kinds of memorable characters and tempting vices (aka delicious deals), but there’s also a sense of danger. Sometimes, somebody new blows open the saloon doors and saunters over to the bar.

And every now and then, of course, there’s an all-out brawl that leads to a showdown in the streets at high-noon. Remember these famous fast-food scandals and lawsuits? Here are seven big ones from recent memory.

You know the story from 2005: A woman “found” a human finger in her chili at Wendy’s. Unfortunately for Wendy’s, this story is infamous, but more fortunately, this was proven not to be Wendy’s fault. It turns out, the woman brought that finger with her and planted it in the chili, which is absolutely wild. Her husband's coworker had lost the finger in an industrial accident, and they conspired to save that finger and bring it to Wendy’s. The woman, Anna Ayala, served four years in prison for the scam. Insane stuff.

Taco Bell was once hit with a class-action lawsuit in 2011 that claimed that the chain’s ground beef did not really qualify as “beef.” The suit alleged that Taco Bell’s beef instead was only 35 percent beef, and the rest made of filler ingredients. Bold claim. 

Taco Bell denied it, aggressively lawyered up, and got the suit dropped, claiming their beef was actually 88 percent, but agreeing to adjust their marketing practices and disclose more information about the ingredients. 100 percent would be nice, but it is what it is.

More recently, a similar story resulted in Subway’s favor, when a California woman claimed Subway’s tuna was made out of other stuff than tuna. Subway put the kibosh on that one pretty quickly, claiming that they only sold “100% real, wild-caught tuna," and the suit was dismissed permanently.

They often teach this one in law school. You’ve definitely heard this one before — though you might not be aware of the whole story. In 1992, a case was brought against McDonald's after a woman suffered serious burns when she spilled a cup of coffee from the chain in her lap. 

While the 79-year-old woman, Stella Liebeck, initially offered to settle for $20,000 to cover medical expenses and lost income, McDonald's was unwilling to pay more than $800, and so the suit went to trial. While the jury found Mrs. Liebeck to be partially to blame for her injuries, it also initially rewarded her nearly $3 million in punitive damages. The high-price tag was due to McDonald's unwillingness to change its policy of serving coffee at extremely hot temperatures that can cause third-degree burns, despite the fact that the company was aware of the risk and that there were more than 700 previous reports of injury from the coffee. The judge ultimately reduced the award by 80 percent and McDonald's and Liebeck eventually reached a confidential settlement.

McDonald’s changed their coffee temperature after that.

One time, there was a dude who thought he could take on all of Starbucks by slamming them with a class-action lawsuit over the amount of ice in the cups. This guy claimed that the coffee titan was robbing people of precious coffee because of all the ice the employees were instructed to put into each iced drink. A California judge promptly dismissed it almost immediately, noting in his ruling:

"If children have figured out that including ice in a cold beverage decreases the amount of liquid they will receive, the Court has no difficulty concluding that a reasonable consumer would not be deceived into thinking that when they order an iced tea, that the drink they receive will include both ice and tea and that for a given size cup, some portion of the drink will be ice rather than whatever liquid beverage the consumer ordered."

Starbucks also pointed out that customers can order "light ice" or "extra ice" depending on their personal preference.

Jack in the Box made a very tasteful commercial once, and yeah, sure, maybe it suggested that Carl’s Jr. / Hardee’s was using angus burgers made from, you know, the word angus but without the “G.” Great stuff, Jack. CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc., the parent company of Carl’s Jr and Hardee's, ran crying to the teacher and sued Jack in the Box, asking for corrective advertising. The judge, however, failed to see that the company was harmed by the ads and denied the requested injunction to stop the ads from airing. The two companies eventually settled out of court though the details weren't made public.

“Papa” John Schnatter started as a simple pizza guy, but somewhere along the line, things seemed to have gone off the rails. In his career he (big inward breath) was accused of stalking and sexual harassment, used the single worst racial slur on a conference call, and claimed to have eaten 40 pizzas in 30 days. He also claimed there would be a reckoning, like he’s Bane or something, and declaring "I am Papa John." Now Pop’s is owned by Todd Penegor, and in some specific, franchised locations, Shaquille O’Neal.