That’s one hot sauce.
A San Antonio restaurant chain’s barbecue sauce burned a customer so badly that it now has to fork over $2.9 million in damages.
Genesis Monita, 19, suffered second-degree burns after spilling Bill Miller Bar-B-Q’s “dangerously hot” barbecue sauce on her right thigh in 2023, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
A Bexar County jury reached its verdict on Friday, finding the restaurant’s “gross negligence” as the cause.
“It sends the message that companies cannot put profits over customer safety. It protects people in our community and elsewhere when companies know that,” Lawrence Morales II, an attorney representing Monita, told the outlet.
The victim was awarded $900,000 to pay for her mental and physical pain, medical care and lost earnings, and another $1.8 million in punitive damages, according to Kens 5.
In May 2023, Monita and her sister had grabbed breakfast tacos at the drive-thru on their way to school, and decided to eat them in their car while parked in the restaurant’s lot.
The barbecue sauce was so hot that Monita dropped the container, and the sauce seeped through her ripped jeans, causing a burn, she claimed.
In her complaint, she said that she was never warned that the condiment — which was 189 degrees, way above the 165-degree temperature the sauce is supposed to maintain — was “dangerously hot.”
It was also not in a container “adequate” to hold it, she claimed.
Monita and her mother explained during the trial that the injury caused the teen to miss both school and work, and led to a bout of depression.
Morales also told jurors that another woman burned her abdomen with barbecue sauce from the same Bill Miller location. And since the two incidents, the company hasn’t put any new safety measures in place, he added.
The lawyer for Bill Miller — which dispenses two ounces of sauce in a 4-ounce plastic container — countered, saying in the 865 days between the two accidents, the chain doled out more than 2.2 million ounces of barbecue sauce with no other complaints.
The restaurant also argued that after Monita was injured, it issued her a check for her medical bills, offered to clean her car, and compensate any of her lost salary, but she declined the gestures, as per The Independent.
It also contended that Monita never had to return to her medical clinic for additional care after her initial visit and she never lost her job.
