A judge has dismissed a McDonald’s franchise in Hawthorne as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by a woman who contended a wardrobe malfunction in the drive-through lane ended up as a case of revenge porn in 2022 through the misconduct of a restaurant employee.
In her Torrance Superior Court lawsuit filed in March 2023, the woman alleged the “unauthorized taking, publication and dissemination of a photo of plaintiff’s breast is a shocking and degrading invasion of privacy.” On Monday, Judge Gary Y. Tanaka issued a final ruling in which he agreed with the franchisee, D and T Restaurants Inc., that there were no triable issues in the woman’s part of the case against D and T for invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence.
The judge said it is “certainly not reasonably foreseeable or incidental to the business” for an employee to take and post a naked photo of a customer.
“And, taking this further, perhaps, the fact that the customer appeared disrobed in the photograph occurred merely through inadvertence and circumstance,” according to Tanaka.
The judge had heard arguments on July 28 and taken the case under submission.
The plaintiff was a customer in the drive-through lane of the McDonald’s in the 3500 block of Rosecrans Avenue at about 3:40 a.m. on April 2, 2022, the suit stated. The order taker waited 20 minutes to take plaintiff’s order, saying she could not hear the plaintiff, according to the suit.
When the plaintiff finally attempted to place her order, she was told the store was now serving only breakfast, according to the suit.
“Plaintiff complained to the female employee at McDonald’s that they wasted her time pretending that they could not hear her and then switched the menu without any explanation, which plaintiff considered unprofessional,” the suit stated.
The woman, now 34, tried to complain, but as she did so a female employee took a photograph of the plaintiff’s vehicle license plate, according to the suit. The plaintiff asked for the employee’s name as well as the chance to talk to a supervisor, but allegedly was denied in both cases.
The plaintiff posted a review of her experience on Yelp and in response, a user dubbed “Marquita L” mocked the plaintiff with the statement, “please the next time you (go) to any McDonald’s or other restaurant make sure you put on your clothes well, please do not arrive like this,” according to the suit.
The posting included an attached photo taken of the plaintiff from inside the McDonald’s with a circle around her unintentionally exposed breast, the suit stated.
“With a click on the photo … a larger version of the photo would pop up in which you could clearly see plaintiff’s breast as highlighted by McDonald’s employee,” according to the suit, which further stated the plaintiff did not know that her blouse had “shifted accidentally” during her interaction with the McDonald’s employees.
The plaintiff also was unaware that McDonald’s employees had allegedly taken photographs of her breast that was “inadvertently exposed from her shirt,” the suit stated.