A blind man is suing McDonald’s because, he says, the fast food giant’s policy of keeping only its drive-thru service open late at night discriminates against people who can’t see — and, thus, have little chance of successfully navigating a vehicle up to the little window.
The man, 35-year-old Louisiana resident Scott Magee, filed his class-action lawsuit against Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald’s Corp. in U.S. District Court in Chicago on Thursday, reports CBS Chicago.
“Blind people must hope for a companion with a car or paid taxi services to assist them in selecting and purchasing McDonald’s food,” Magee said in the lawsuit.
He also complained that while McDonald’s serves all-day breakfast menus and its franchises sometimes have multiple drive-thru lanes, the $27.5 billion burger company shows no “concern whatsoever for the accessibility of their late night drive-thrus to the disabled,” according to the Chicago Tribune.
Magee’s lawsuit against McDonald’s features a tale of late-night woe at a McDonald’s franchise close to his Metairie, La. home where he tried to open the locked doors of the restaurant — to order a Quarter Pounder with cheese, perhaps, or a McRib.
He claims in the lawsuit that employees “refused service to him, laughed, and told him to go away,” according to CBS Chicago.
Consequently, Magee says in his class-action lawsuit, he “felt ashamed of his inability to access the McDonald’s services.”
Magee’s attorney is Roberto Luis Costales, who identifies himself as “El Puño Latino,” on his Facebook page. (“Puño” means “fist” in Spanish.)
The federal lawsuit against McDonald’s demands “auxiliary aids or services” for blind people.
Costales, who describes going to McDonald’s as “a quintessentially American activity” that everyone should be able to enjoy, wants every McDonalds’s franchise in America to install phones for blind people to use to call in orders as they wait outside, according to the Tribune.
It’s not clear how the attorney’s bright idea would help deaf people, or people who are mute, or people whose various handicaps prevent them from both driving and using phones.
In any case, the lawsuit also seeks undetermined money damages and, of course, court costs and attorney costs.
Costales has also represented Magee’s brother, Emmett, who sued Coca-Cola over its soda-dispensing machines last year. Emmett Magee and Costales lost that case at the district level. They are appealing.
A McDonald’s spokesman had no comment on the current litigation.
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