(Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News)(Ashley Landis)
A Texas jury has ordered a barbecue restaurant to pay $2.8 million to a woman who was badly burned by its barbecue sauce.
The woman, 19-year-old Genesis Monita, sued Bill Miller Bar-B-Q in San Antonio after spilling sauce on her right leg, resulting in second-degree burns.
The incident unfolded in May 2023, after Monita ordered breakfast tacos with barbecue sauce from the drive-through. She then pulled into a nearby parking spot to eat, according to the lawsuit.
When she removed the sauce from the brown paper bag, Monita dropped it on her leg because it was so hot.
Bill Miller B-B-Q’s policy says sauce should be heated to a minimum of 165 degree. That day, the sauce was 189 degrees.
Monita’s attorney Lawrence Morales II said the restaurant should have warned her about the temperature of the sauce, and placed it in an adequate styrofoam container rather than plastic, and provided better training to employees.
A similar incident occurred at the same restaurant two years earlier, Morales said. A woman was burned on the abdomen after spilling barbecue sauce.
In an interview Monday with The Dallas Morning News, Morales praised the jury’s verdict and said it would prevent others from being hurt.
“This sends a message that companies cannot put profits over safety,” Morales said.
An attorney for Bill Miller B-B-Q did not respond to a phone call Monday from The News. It’s not yet known if the restaurant will appeal the verdict.
During the trial, the restaurant’s attorney, Barry McClenahan, said the restaurant has safely dispensed millions of ounces of barbecue sauce, according to a report by the San Antonio Express-News.
“If that’s unreasonably dangerous, then we’re all in trouble,” McClenahan said. “We have a duty for our own safety…Just because something happened to us doesn’t make it someone else’s doing,” the publication quoted him as saying.
A longtime San Antonio staple, Bill Miller B-B-Q began when its namesake started a poultry and egg operation in 1950. Three years later, he opened a fried chicken to-go restaurant, and later added hamburgers and barbecue to the menu. Bill Miller has expanded to about 75 locations across Texas.
The case has drawn comparisons to a highly publicized 1992 lawsuit against McDonald’s. In that incident, a 79-year-old Albuquerque, N.M., woman was burned after spilling coffee on herself while holding the cup between her knees to lift the lid. She received third-degree burns, requiring an eight-day hospital stay, and skin grafts.
A jury awarded the woman nearly $3 million in punitive damages, a figure that shocked many Americans at the time. A judge reduced that amount to $480,000. The two sides ultimately settled out of court for an undisclosed figure.
