Judge Orders McDonald’s To Stay Closed Over COVID-19 Outbreak

A California superior court state judge has ordered an Oakland McDonald’s to stay closed until he decides whether the franchise will have to improve its COVID-19 safety protocols after employees filed a public nuisance suit.

The judge opined that the McDonald’s franchise will have to appear in court and argue why a preliminary injunction should not be granted until the restaurant complies with numerous coronavirus safety protocols.

Some of these protocols include instructing managers and employees that workers must stay home if they are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, are awaiting COVID-19 test results, have tested positive for COVID-19 or have come into close contact with someone who has tested positive for the virus.

In addition, the judge ordered that the McDonald’s should remain closed until it can prove that it has performed a deep cleaning by professional cleaners and regularly performs deep cleaning and sanitization of the restaurant’s facilities and equipment.

The public nuisance lawsuit was filed this month in Alameda County, Calif., by numerous McDonald’s employees who claim they were forced to work even after an outbreak of COVID-19 at the restaurant.

Three of the plaintiffs say they became sick while working at the McDonald’s restaurant at in Oakland. Another plaintiff is the infant son of one of the plaintiffs who contracted COVID-19 from his mother.

The final plaintiff is an employee who worked at the restaurant in close proximity with co-workers who later tested positive for COVID-19 and fears he will become infected and spread the disease to others.

“In callous disregard of the physical and emotional impacts of the novel coronavirus on the restaurant’s employees, customers, and those in the community with whom those employees and customers lived, engaged, and otherwise interacted, Defendants knowingly and recklessly, by acts of commission and omission, exacerbated the spread — and the reasonable fear of spread – of COVID-19 among Plaintiffs and others in their community,” the McDonald’s COVID-19 lawsuit says.

The workers explain that, at last count, the COVID-19 outbreak that occurred at their location has resulted in at least 25 cases of COVID-19 and that each of those cases involves workers or their family members in low-income Latino communities, a population hit hard by the outbreak.

The McDonald’s employees also say they were forced to work with COVID-19 symptoms, and the restaurant failed to adopt and enforce precautionary measures such as social distancing and did not provide its employees with adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), such as face masks and gloves.

In addition, the plaintiffs claim McDonald’s did not provide any mechanism for workers with COVID-19 to request to take paid sick leave and continues to violate emergency public health laws.

The workers are seeking declaratory, injunctive, compensatory and other relief to protect them, their family members and community members from further exposure to the COVID-19 virus and to compensate them from harms that they continue to suffer, including fears of further COVID-19 exposure.

One plaintiff, Yamilett Olimara Osoy Hernandez, says she has been employed by McDonald’s as a crew member for about five months. She says she rarely leaves the house except to go to work and claims she was exposed to COVID-19 when she worked in close proximity to at least three co-workers who tested positive for the virus.

Hernandez explains that she started experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 — including difficulty breathing, headache, body ache and a feeling that she was going to faint — while she was working at McDonald’s on May 20, 2020. She claims she asked her shift manager whether she should go home and was told not to leave until she found a co-worker to cover her shift.

Hernandez maintains she subsequently tested positive for COVID-19 and transmitted it to her 10-month-old son and husband. She says McDonald’s does not provide her with health insurance and so she has had to pay for her medicine and other health supplies by herself.

The McDonald’s plaintiffs claim the restaurant failed to take even the most basic precautions to protect the health and safety of its employees, leading to a public spread of the COVID-19 disease among employees, their family members and close contacts.

“Defendants were fully aware of life-threatening dangers posed by exposure to COVID19 by March 2020 if not earlier, including the risk that this deadly, highly contagious, easily transmitted virus could spread among workers and customers in confined indoor environments, especially if potentially infected individuals — including non-symptomatic individuals — did not have adequate PPE,” the McDonald’s lawsuit goes on to state.

Are you a fast food worker who has been exposed to COVID-19? Leave a message in the comments section below.

The plaintiffs are represented by Michael Rubin, Stacey M. Leyton, Barbara J. Chisholm and Corinne F. Johnson of Altshuler Berzon LLP.

The McDonald’s COVID-19 Lawsuit is Yamilett Olimara Osoy Hernandez, et al. v. VES McDonald’s, et al., Case No. RG20064825, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Alameda.

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