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True fast food connoisseurs know McDonald’s is hard to beat when it comes to breakfast. However, one woman who ordered a McMuffin at a location in New York City would probably disagree with that assertion when you consider she filed a lawsuit claiming no human should ever be subjected to the sandwich she was served.
The first McDonald’s location opened for business in California in 1940 en route to spawning the biggest fast food empire on the planet. It transformed into the massive corporation it is today on the back of the burgers and fries that served as the foundation of its original menu, which has gradually evolved over the decades.
In 1971, a franchisee in the state where the chain was founded used Eggs Benedict as the inspiration for the sandwich he dubbed the “Egg McMuffin,” and that was the centerpiece of the breakfast menu McDonald’s rolled out nationwide six years later.
That option ended up being a hit, and a McDonald’s breakfast menu that also boasts legendary items like its hash browns and McGriddles is widely viewed as the gold standard when it comes to getting your fast food fix in the morning (it’s beloved to the point where McDonald’s restaurants started offering an all-day option in 2015, but the pandemic sadly brought that glorious five-year era to an end while reinstituing the dreaded 10:30 A.M. deadline).
I can’t say I’ve ever been let down after ordering the most important meal of the day at Mickey D’s, but that was the case with a woman from Texas who apparently had a fairly traumatizing experience in The Big Apple.
A McDonald’s in New York City sparked a lawsuit involving a McMuffin that a woman says was “unfit for human consumption”
The original McMuffin featured egg, cheese, and Canadian bacon on an English muffin, and it was eventually supplemented by another option where sausage is the featured meat.
According to The Independent, that’s the route a Texas woman named Yvette Hinds went when she visited a McDonald’s located at the corner of 51st Street and Broadway in New York City during a trip in May of 2023.
However, according to a lawsuit that was recently filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court, she claims the sandwich made her “violently ill and nauseated” while causing “severe pains and distress throughout her body” to the point where her “physical, nervous and mental systems were seriously and permanently injured.”
The filing claims Hinds continues to deal with lingering medical issues stemming from the consumption of the Sausage McMuffin that was allegedly “contaminated, tainted, poisonous, injurious and wholly unfit for human consumption” due to the supposed presence of “contaminants, poisons, toxins, parasites, bacteria, germs and/or organisms” (her attorney apparently decided to cast a wide net, and it is unclear exactly what caused the reaction she said she had).
Hinds is seeking a jury trial and going after the restaurant that served the McMuffin in addition to the McDonald’s corporation for unspecified monetary damages on top of court fees and the cost of her legal counsel. As of this writing, neither the franchisee nor the company has officially responded to the lawsuit.