Contaminated Coffee Found Not Responsible for Plaintiff’s Maladies

By Luke Hamer

The case of MacNeill v. McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada Limited, 2025 ONSC 3780, involves a plaintiff who drank coffee from a paper cup she purchased at a McDonald’s restaurant in Orillia, which was later found to contain a diluted deliming agent used to clean the coffee pots. The plaintiff claimed the incident resulted in a condition called Muscle Tension Dysphonia (“MTD”), an upper aerodigestive tract injury exacerbated by speaking, eating and drinking. The Plaintiff also claimed psychological injuries.

The plaintiff claimed damages for pain and suffering between $100,000 to $125,000; past loss of income between $297,742 to $344,555; future loss of income between $1,043,037 to $1,101,484; loss of competitive advantage (in the alternative) between $80,000 to $150,000; and future care costs of $222,432.

Liability for the incident was not disputed and after a 9-day judge alone trial in Barrie, Justice McCarthy awarded the plaintiff $5,000 in general damages, plus pre-judgment interest, $0 for loss of income (past, future or for a loss of competitive advantage) and $0 for future care costs.

Analysis

Justice McCarthy provided a succinct summary of this matter, outlining the plaintiff’s pre-incident history as well as credibility issues in arriving at His Honour’s decision. 

The plaintiff had a prior history of ADHD, sexual abuse and drug and alcohol use. She had dropped out of high school before obtaining her Grade 12 equivalency and suffered from physical impairments from a prior motor vehicle accident in 2009.

The plaintiff also had a wide-ranging pre-incident work history, employed in various positions at a coffee shop, on an assembly line, her mother’s salon, a nursing home, a shoe store, a hotel as well as in landscaping/snow removal. Four of her previous jobs were revealed to be short stints of three weeks, five weeks, eight weeks and four months.

In the end, the plaintiff’s lack of credibility was a significant issue, and Justice McCarthy rejected a large portion of her evidence. His Honour found the plaintiff exaggerated her symptoms, downplayed the role of her pre-existing conditions, the impact of her prior motor vehicle accident, her psychological problems and drug use.

His Honour went on to state that the plaintiff’s own assertion that after the incident she suffered blisters in her mouth from the delimer solution damaged her credibility even further and was an attempt to “sell” her physical trauma as significant in light of the lack of evidence supporting same. Justice McCarthy found that as a result of ingesting the delimer solution (what the defendant argued was both food-safe and having a pH level in the same range as lemon juice), the plaintiff suffered (at most), “an unexpected, unpleasant, but transient sensation in her mouth” which may have been followed by “some upset in the stomach, some nausea, and a bout of diarrhea”.

Additionally, the plaintiff’s own psychological and psycho-vocational experts both omitted in their reports and direct examination that their clinic had assessed, diagnosed and provided previous litigation reports for her 2009 motor vehicle accident, a fact Justice McCarthy took significant issue with. His Honour found this to be a “serious omission”, the opinions to be “fatally compromised” and a “breach of their respective duties as experts to provide the court with opinion evidence that is fair, objective, and non-partisan”.    

Justice McCarthy was not persuaded the plaintiff demonstrated that “but for” McDonald’s negligence, she would not have suffered MTD or any of the other symptoms she reported to be ongoing as per Athey v. Leonati, 1996 CanLII 183 (SCC).  While His Honour accepted that the plaintiff may be suffering from MTD, it was not proven on the balance of probabilities that “but for” the coffee incident, she would not have MTD regardless. Justice McCarthy found it just as plausible that the plaintiff suffered from this condition due to acid reflux, combined with heavy voice use and the negative effects of smoking.

Takeaway

This case is a good example of the importance of a witness’s credibility and how damaging to a plaintiff’s case it can be when it is found to be lacking. Justice McCarthy made this a focal point in His Honour’s reasons, summarized as follows:

“This was undoubtedly an overstatement of her symptoms, which I find is consistent with her approach to the claim: to exaggerate her physical symptoms, link those symptoms uniquely to the incident, magnify the severity of the injuries and increase the value of her claim.”