McDonald's restaurant located at 2438 W Cermak Rd, Chicago IL.

In one of the first rulings to order a business to improve its COVID-19 pandemic protections, a Chicago judge has ordered McDonald's to better enforce social distancing and mask wearing at its stores, concluding the risks to the community are "severe" and potentially a "matter of life or death" for its employees.

Wednesday's ruling, by Cook County Circuit Court Judge Eve Reilly, found that McDonald's had supplied enough face coverings, hand sanitizer and gloves, monitored infections among workers and educated employees on how the COVID-19 pandemic spreads. However, she wrote, McDonald's was not properly training its employees on two key elements of its policies: social distancing and correct wearing of masks. And that contradicted Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker's executive order on May 29 regarding COVID-19 protections.

While McDonald's "has the right idea," the judge wrote in her order, which partly granted an emergency motion for preliminary injunction, "it is not being put into practice exactly as McDonald's envisioned, thus endangering public health."

"The potential risk of harm to these plaintiffs and the community at large is severe," she wrote. "It may very well be a matter of life or death to individuals who come in contact with these restaurants or employees of these restaurants on a regular, or even semi-regular basis, during the COVID-19 pandemic. And while there are many individuals who believe the pandemic is no longer a threat, science and medical research indicate otherwise. There is a long road to recovery for all of us."

The ruling comes after four days of testimony that included Bill Garrett, the senior vice president of operations at McDonald's, and two days after another judge in California granted a temporary restraining order against a McDonald's franchise in a case in which employees at a store were told to wear coffee filters and doggie diapers as masks.

"The preliminary injunction shows that McDonald's restaurants failed to keep their workers safe amid the COVID-19 pandemic and posed a danger to public health, particularly when it came to social distancing and masks," Danny Rosenthal of James & Hoffman in Washington, D.C., an attorney for the plaintiffs, wrote in an emailed statement.

"We are pleased that Judge Reilly issued an injunction that will not only help keep workers safe, but will also protect workers' families, McDonald's customers, and the community at large," Rosenthal said.

McDonald's, represented by Jonathan Bunge of Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart & Sullivan, said in an emailed statement that the judge found its COVID-19 policies did many things right.

"McDonald's is pleased the judge found that strong measures are already in place across these Chicagoland restaurants to create a safe experience for customers and crew, including providing sufficient supply of masks, gloves and sanitizers and sufficiently monitoring for COVID cases, as McDonald's is doing throughout the country," the statement said.

"These measures are part of the 50 processes we have enhanced during the pandemic to keep restaurant employees and customers safe. We have also issued a 59-page guide outlining national minimum restaurant standards, including adhering to social distancing guidelines for customers and crew, conducting wellness and temperature checks, requiring protective barriers, face masks and gloves, increasing the frequency of handwashing and providing contactless purchasing options to customers."

The case, filed on May 19, involved five employees at four McDonald's locations in Chicago, and four people who lived with them, alleging the restaurant chain had failed to provide enough protections from the coronavirus. The case is one of the few to ask a judge to order a business to impose COVID-19 protections, the most prominent of which involved a public nuisance case against meat processor Smithfield Foods Inc. that ended in an order denying the plaintiffs' injunction request.

McDonald's also faces another class action, brought on June 16, alleging the restaurant chain created a public nuisance at a store in Oakland, California, by allowing 23 people to get sick with COVID-19, including a 10-month-old baby.

The class action in Chicago alleges both public nuisance and negligence claims against McDonald's and two franchise owners, one of which dropped out of the case after selling its store. Two of the stores had COVID-19 cases among their employees, according to the judge's order.

McDonald's lost an attempt to dismiss the case on jurisdictional grounds, setting the stage for a showdown over a potential preliminary injunction.

In addition to Garrett, the preliminary injunction hearing, held via Zoom and broadcast live on YouTube, featured lengthy testimony from the plaintiffs, store managers and experts on both sides, and numerous slides of store signs, layouts and photographs.

In her ruling, Reilly found that McDonald's had provided much of what the plaintiffs initially had asked for, such as hand sanitizer and masks. She also found that its policies, such as posting signs requiring customers to wear masks and installing Plexiglas at the counter and drive-thru, were "not unreasonable."

But, she noted, McDonald's also told employees they could be closer than six feet if they passed each other momentarily, as long as it's not for 10 minutes or more.

"McDonald's has created an environment that leads employees, including managers, to believe they can take off their masks and stand within 6 feet of each other as long as they do not do so in excess of 10 minutes," Reilly wrote. "This increases the health risk for the employees, their families and the public as a whole and conflicts with the governor's order on social distancing potentially undoing any good it has done as we fight this incredibly contagious disease."

She also cited photographic evidence and the testimony of employees that workers stood within six feet of each other without properly wearing masks—both of which were "serious failures." Social distancing and masks, she wrote, were key elements of the governor's order, as well has health guidelines from the Illinois Department of Public Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Although neither in and of themselves necessarily create a substantial or unreasonable interference with the public's or the plaintiffs' rights, the combination certainly does," she wrote.

She denied an injunction as to the plaintiffs' negligence claims, calling their alleged injuries "speculative" given that none of the plaintiffs had evidence of COVID-19 exposure or infection.

Instant Insights /

Judge orders McDonald's to improve COVID-19 protections

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