Lawsuits

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Woman Claims Sundae Tainted With Blood Fri Jan 20, 3:54 PM ET

GEORGETOWN, Del. - A woman filed a lawsuit claiming that a hot fudge sundae she bought for her 12-year-old son was contaminated with human blood, but the owner of a fast-food franchise says the red substance was really just strawberry syrup.

A Superior Court judge was scheduled to hear arguments Friday in a lawsuit filed by Carmen Jara against AJM Enterprises, which operates a McDonald's restaurant in Georgetown.

According to court documents, Jara bought food, including four hot fudge sundaes, at the restaurant's drive-thru window on Dec. 30, 2004.

Her son, now 13, dug into his sundae and "recognized the taste of blood and, upon careful inspection, noted a red substance on the side of the sundae cup as well as mixed into his ice cream," the lawsuit claims.

Jara then went into the store and spoke to a swing manager, who confirmed that it was blood, according to the lawsuit. The manager, Joshua Ferrell, said the employee who prepared the sundae had an injured, bleeding finger, and told Jara that he had advised the employee to keep a bandage on his finger, according to the lawsuit.

Jara, who filed a report with Georgetown police, requested that the employee, who no longer works at the restaurant, undergo a blood test to rule out any diseases, but that her request was refused.

Michael Meoli, owner of the McDonald's franchise, said the claims are unfounded, and that strawberry syrup probably had clogged the sundae machine.

Ferrell, who no longer works at the restaurant, should not have said the substance was blood, Meoli said.

"What is he, a botanist? No, he's a 21-year-old assistant manager who saw her screaming in the lobby and said 'whatever you say lady.'"

Meoli, who ran unsuccessfully for a state House seat last year, said the allegations are meant to ruin his business.

"I hope she gets the same thing the Wendy's lady got," he said, referring to a woman recently sentenced to nine years in prison for planting a severed finger in a bowl of Wendy's chili to extort money from the fast-food chain.

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I'm no dentist, but my girlfriend is -- open wide

Tue Jan 17, 9:02 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - A British dentist has been banned from working after allowing her unqualified boyfriend to carry out dental work on patients in her surgery, the profession's UK regulatory body said Tuesday.

Mojgan Azari was found guilty of serious professional misconduct for letting boyfriend Omid Amidi-Mazaheri work at her practices in south London between 2002 and 2003, the General Dental Council (GDC) said.

The boyfriend worked on more than 600 people, drilling out cavities without local anesthetic and installing expensive fillings that crumbled within days, often leaving patients in agony, the BBC said.

The GDC said Azari had allowed him to carry on working in her surgeries for seven months after she had been warned that he was unregistered.

"The direct result of your actions was that a recall exercise involving several hundred patients had to be mounted, to establish whether they required further dental remedial action," the GDC said in its ruling.

"This caused the patients considerable distress and inconvenience, and cost the National Health Service (NHS) approximately 180,000 pounds ($317,000)."

The GDC said Azari had pleaded guilty in February 2005 to four counts of obtaining money by deception from the NHS in relation to the case and had been jailed for 12 months.

The BBC said Amidi-Mazaheri, an Iranian national, had received a two-year sentence for similar offences.

Consequently the GDC said its conduct committee had decided to strike Azari's name from the register.

"In view of the gravity of the offences and their effect in undermining public confidence and the damage to the reputation of the profession, the committee is satisfied that the only appropriate sanction in this case is erasure," it said.

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Two patients in surgical slip-up

Mon Jan 16, 9:55 AM ET

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean doctors mistakenly removed part of the stomach of a patient due to have thyroid surgery, while removing the thyroid gland of another scheduled for stomach surgery, a hospital official said Monday.

The surgical mix-up took place at Konyang University Hospital in the city of Taejon, about 150 km (95 miles) south of Seoul and involved two women in their sixties who were both in for surgery the same day, hospital spokesman Kim Man-sik said.

Medical staff found out about the mix-up, which took place on December 29, only after they were filing paperwork on the two women, he said.

Doctors later performed the correct surgical procedures on both women and re-attached the part of the stomach they had removed from the patient with the thyroid problem, Kim said.

Both were recovering from their operations, he said.