The Daily News, Bowling Green, Ky
By Hayli Morrison
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Oct. 1–Jurors criticized Red Lobster and its defense team after awarding $225,000 and medical cost reimbursement to a Glasgow man who sued the restaurant, claiming he contracted the hepatitis A virus from a server there.
“We just thought Red Lobster should be held accountable for their employee and their practices,” juror Jamie Barnett said.
“They make rules and they don’t follow them,” juror Glenn Schilke added.

Barnett and Schilke also criticized the fact that a 30-day evaluation that server Carissa Phelps said she had received was not in her personnel file as it was supposed to be. Phelps notified Red Lobster immediately after testing positive for hepatitis A in early August 2001 — plaintiff Tim Emberton ate at the restaurant on July 27, 2001, during which time Phelps was contagious.
Emberton said he felt some satisfaction with the trial’s outcome, but still wished he had never been affected by hepatitis A, a liver infection that makes a person ill for up to six weeks and energy deficient for up to six months.
“I wouldn’t go back through that again for any amount of money,” Emberton said. “It was a very unpleasant experience and I’m glad it’s over.”
Bowling Green-based attorney Rick Hughes, whom jurors criticized for introducing as evidence a Red Lobster sales receipt from 2000 that had no apparent bearing on the case, said he plans to appeal.
“There are many issues that occurred during the course of the case that are appealable,” Hughes said, adding that one such issue is the statute of limitations. In this case, Emberton had one year to file a lawsuit, but he instead took two years, Hughes said.
Phelps testified Wednesday that, in her four years of employment at the Red Lobster on Scottsville Road, she did not know about the restaurant’s double handwashing policy. But former general manager Linda Chambers testified that Phelps should have known about the policy from a training video shown to all new employees.
The policy requires any employees using the restroom to wash their hands once inside the restroom and again in the restaurant kitchen. Phelps said she always washed only once and was never told otherwise.
Phelps’ testimony Wednesday also revealed that, in July and August 2001, Red Lobster used unwrapped drinking straws and did not require servers to wear sanitary gloves when rolling silverware.
The jury absolved Phelps of all responsibility and instead placed sole blame with Red Lobster and its parent company, General Mills Restaurants Inc. Governmental immunity was granted as grounds for dismissal of the Barren River District Health Department, originally named in the suit under accusations of negligence for failing to notify the public of Phelps’ condition.
In addition to the $225,000 award, Emberton should receive reimbursement for $8,666 in medical expenses, the jury decided.
“The message is that restaurant safety is more important to a jury than some corporations who bend the rules and cut corners would have us believe,” said Steve Hixson, Emberton’s Bowling Green-based attorney.