A Pennsylvania woman has sued Chick-fil-A after she claimed a dead rodent was found baked into her chicken sandwich.
Ellen Manfalouti of Northampton has filed a lawsuit in Bucks County Court against Chick-fil-A, seeking more than $50,000 for the physical and psychological damages that she endured after the incident occurred.
In her lawsuit, Manfalouti said that her co-worker picked up the sandwich for her at Chick-fil-A's Langhorne drive-through in November 2016.
Manfalouti, 46, had just started to eat the chicken sandwich in a conference room at her office when she "felt something funny on the bottom of the bun" and thought the bun was burned badly.
Her co-worker Cara Phelan said that as soon as Manfalouti threw the sandwich on the table, she realized it was a small rodent in the sandwich as she saw the whiskers and tail. A laboratory analysis provided to Manfalouti's lawyer confirmed the presence of a rat or mouse baked into the bun.
Manfalouti's lawyer, William Davis, said he filed the lawsuit last week against Chick-fil-A franchise owner Dave Heffernan and the store, because both had "stonewalled" attempts to address the complaint despite months of seeking a resolution.
The lawsuit contends that the defendants "failed to supervise employees who intentionally and/or knowingly served a sandwich to a customer with a dead rodent baked into the bun" and "failed to have proper procedures in place to inspect their own food products before selling them to customers."
Manfalouti said after realizing that she almost bit into a dead rodent, she was given intravenous medication for her nausea later that day. She also saw a psychologist for her anxiety.
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