McDonald's: If An Employee Uploaded Nude Photos From Found Cameraphone, Sue The Employee, Not Us
from the would-you-like-fries-with-that dept
Late last year, we wrote about the odd case where a guy sued McDonald's over the fact that naked photos of his wife appeared online. Apparently, he had left his phone at a local McD's, and now claims that an employee uploaded the photos. As we pointed out in the original post, we had a lot of trouble believing that McDonald's, the company, should in any way be liable. What if the phone had been found by a random other customer? The situation could have been exactly the same, but would the restaurant have been liable? It appears McDonald's is making exactly that argument. Michael Scott points out that the company has made it clear that, if anything was done wrong here, and it was done by the employee, it was done well outside the scope of employment and it makes no sense for the company to be responsible for it.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: camera phones, liability
Companies: mcdonald's
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Re: ac 1
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How? The fact that the company has the rule would emphasise (to this layman) that the employee was acting outside the scope of employment.
Would McD's be less liable if they didn't have this rule?
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"Except for one little thing: McDonalds has a lost and found policy - the recovered cell phone should have been returned to the manager on duty, who would have secured it. Failure by an employee to respect company rules is an issue."
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McDonalds has lots of loot
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McDonald's
Or, he could sue himself for being an idiot, but there probably isn't any money in that.
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We need an "obvious" meter...
-Steve Dallas
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Re: We need an "obvious" meter...
-Corbin Dallas
(Nice Bloom Co. ref, tho.)
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Slippery Slope...
So on the one hand, this defense sounds plausible, I doubt it will work because of the precedent it would set for other cases.
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Re: Slippery Slope...
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Re: Re: Slippery Slope...
I worked at McDs as a teen and a coworker found a purse with $5,000. In this case, he did the right thing and returned it.
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Re: Re: Re: Slippery Slope...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Slippery Slope...
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Re: Slippery Slope...
Making a cell phone useful is the job of LG (let us assume that the phone is an LG), is LG liable since making the phone usable by anyone is their job?
It seems that making the company liable is a slippery slope in the other direction.
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Re: Slippery Slope...
If the driver was just driving an empty truck around on his own time, that would be entirely different.
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Re: Re: Slippery Slope...
By stealing the phone the employee is outside the scope such as in the case of your insurance is void id you are killed while commiting a criminal act. ergo they should fire his stealing @$$ and walk away. Unless having deviants make the Co. they work for makes them liable then we are in slippery slop indeed.
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Re: Slippery Slope...
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Re: Slippery Slope...
If that truck driver picked up a hooker and killed her, the employer would not be liable. If the pilot punched a nun while walking through the airport, the airline would not be liable.
Get your analogies straight.
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Worthless...
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Re: Worthless...
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I side with the customer on this one...
(not a lawyer)
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Re: I side with the customer on this one...
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Re: Re: I side with the customer on this one...
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Re: I side with the customer on this one...
Those facts puts dealing with customers' left-behind items in the scope of employment of McDonald's workers.
That's why McD's has a policy that if an employee finds customer property that was left behind they're supposed to turn it in to management. IF this particular employee found the phone, put it in their pocket, took it home and uploaded information from it to the web then I don't see how any of that could be McDonald's fault or even preventable by them. All that does is endanger the employee's future employment with the company.
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What they should point out
On the other hand if he did it away from work and off the clock, then he is responsible for his actions....
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McD's is right
I do think that because the employee did not turn the phone into the manager, the employee should be dealt with according to company policy. Other than that the company should have no involvement.
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A+ for creativity but greed got in the way.
Better yet, drop your cell off to get repaired at the local cell phone store then "find" naked pics of your wife online...more plausable that employee was within scope of work looking at "data" on phone then mis-handled the "data" on to the web.
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McDonalds is sort of wrong
Whether some stranger stealing the phone would make them liable or not is irrelevant. There's no presumption of good conduct guaranteed by McDonalds that can be made by its customers about its other customers. Employees are lent a certain amount of trust by customers because they are officers of the company while on company property.
This is why for my husband, nude pics = false. Enjoy the live show instead!
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Re: McDonalds is sort of wrong
2. Just because something can be argued doesn't mean that it should or that it actually has any merit.
3. No line employee is considered to be an officer of the company.
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Re: Re: McDonalds is sort of wrong
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Because the gun shop has a policy that says no riddling customers with machine gun fire, they have no liability when it happens. Is that correct?
2. Just because something can be argued doesn't mean that it should or that it actually has any merit.
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The possibility that something may be found not to have merit is not in itself a reason to be wary of arguing it.
3. No line employee is considered to be an officer of the company.
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If you want to take the term "officer" literally, then yes you're right. If you are the slightest bit inclined to understand what people are trying to infer without being led, it becomes obvious that "officer" and "representative" are interchangeable in this context.
Most McDonalds restaurants are franchises if I'm not mistaken, so it would be the franchise owner and not the corporation that would be liable if anybody.
Any way you want to turn it semantically though, the idea that gross employee misconduct, failure to ensure professionalism and weed out character defects, and maintain a crime-free and safe workplace is not in any way the responsibility of the company is absurd.
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Easy money
2. Drop off my phone at McDonalds.
3. Profit.
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On the one hand, it's hard to see how the company is actually responsible (assuming they had a 'don't fall asleep' policy.) Sorry that this grunt isn't a millionaire, but the 'grab money to clean shore' isn't really any different than 'grab money to move to Tahiti.' It's just a matter of whose greater good is being serviced.
On the other hand, I can see how corporate policy might contribute to an incident (say, if the captain had been worked to exhaustion due to policies re. loading the ship, etc.)
In *this* case, it doesn't seem to be anything that could be prevented in any other way than simply having a policy (if anyone can--elaborate,) which the employee disregarded. I don't think it would even matter if he used the McD computers to do the upload, since he already had violated their policy.
In any case, having nude pics of your wife on your cell phone should confer *some* liability to you.
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If the company takes reasonable precautions against that kind of thing, then I don't believe they should be held liable for when it happens. Now, if by some terrible miracle the blame could be placed on one person for a tanker crashing, then the company would still probably clean it up to maintain their image. Well, one would hope so.
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On second thought, non. It was obvious.
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searching naked pics?
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Grammar Nazi to the rescue!
Douse means to extinguish, to put out, as in water on a fire.
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Scope
It all depends on the details of the offense, very little of which is stated here.
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Re: Scope
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Wifes nudeness
The real question here is..... Is she hot?
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Re: Wifes nudeness
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Re: Re: Wifes nudeness
Did the phone have a password feature? If not, SUE THEM!
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get real
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Re: get real
While he is not blameless, he still did not upload the photos. Your position is like saying because you didn't lock your doors anyone should be able to legally steal your stuff from your house. Yes, you are to blame for what happened. But no, that doesn't let the thief off the hook for stealing.
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Im Curious
Is it against the law to find something and not seek out a lost and found box at an establishment? At worst the employee violated a policy. He didn't steal anything. He was just unethical. What will you sue the employee for?
PervMan: "Judge, I lost my phone and this guy found it and didn't contact me to return it. And he uploaded nude pics of my wife to the Internet."
Judge: "So you are saying that you left pornographic material out in public for anyone to find?"
Hmmm, I wonder how old the employee is...providing pornography to a minor is serious business...
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Re: Im Curious
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Both of 'em need to take some. By both, I mean the plaintiff and the employee. I believe McD's should have no liability here.
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Pics
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Who the hell...
They guy trying to get money for nothing.. that's who.
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This is the most interesting comment yet. I went and checked Wikipedia, and yes, it appears this is a clear case of agency. Please AC, come out of the shadows and inject some sense into the discussion. (And no, I'm not being sarcastic.)
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And it is not surprising that anonymous coward trolls on this blog continue to make pedantic claims like this without explaining themselves. Go figure.
If you have something add, ADD IT. Otherwise, you look like a stuck up fool who wants to show off, but doesn't have the goods to back it up.
This is a conversation. If we got something wrong, tell us, so we can fix it.
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shut up, all of you
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Stick to the issue, please!
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Read the articles
1. The person called McDonalds and they said they would "secure" the phone.
2. the employee put the pictures up with the womans name and phone number - thus they found the pictures when people started calling.
That starts to make it look a little more like a lawsuit, the person who promised to secure the property would have been acting within his job. Of course its still very questionable.
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