Photo: Louise Ogburn/ Sodomized Worker Sues McDonald's For $200M  

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Shepherdsville, Kentucky 

A Shepherdsville jury has awarded $6.1 million to Louise Ogborn, a former Mt. Washington McDonald’s employee. Ogborn had sued for $200 million. The jury also awarded $1.1 million to a former assistant manager who strip-searched Ogborn.

Ogborn sued the company after being strip-searched, humiliated and sodomized in the back office of its Mt. Washington store. A man impersonating a police officer called there in April 2004 and persuaded assistant manager Donna Summers that Ogborn, then 18, had stolen money from a customer.

The caller asked Summers to take Ogborn into a back room and strip search her. A security tape showed Ogborn, crying and covered only in an apron after the strip search, enduring further humiliation that continued for more than three hours.

According to court records and security camera tape, the caller’s requests became more bizarre as the situation proceeded. Eventually, Summers called her fiancé at the time, a middle-aged man named Walter Nix Jr., to come to the restaurant and guard the teen while continuing with the caller’s demands while Nix went back to work.

According to the tape, Nix, while continuing the phone call, made Ogborn remove her apron, jog in place with her hands in the air, do jumping jacks, stand on a chair and, eventually, Nix began spanking her for several minutes at a time.

The taped showed Summers reentering the room several times, at which point Nix would throw the apron back to Ogborn and remove it again each time Summers left.

Eventually Nix ordered Ogborn to perform oral sex on him.

The abuse stopped when a second man, a maintenance worker at the store, was called into the room, picked up the phone and refused to follow the caller’s instructions.

Nix was later convicted of sex abuse, sexual misconduct and unlawful imprisonment and sentenced to five years after pleading guilty in the case.

Summers received probation after entering an Alford Plea to misdemeanor unlawful imprisonment charges. She sued McDonald’s concurrently with Ogborn for $50 million, though Ogborn filed suit against her and assistant manager Kim Dockery as well.

Florida correctional officer David Stewart, 37, was charged with making the phone call, which was one of many that Ogborn’s attorney claimed had been going on for 10 years.

Investigators said Stewart’s calls to some 70 stores in more than 30 states had led to criminal charges for more than one set of unwitting employees.

Mt. Washington police Detective Buddy Stump said that Stewart was “evidently pretty convincing.”

"He was just a slick con man," Stump said. "He'd end up talking the manager into doing a strip search on the employee. His conversations generally lasted for quite some time -- an hour and a half to three hours."

Stump gathered the evidence against Stewart after he traced a phone card used in the call to a store in Florida. An investigator there found surveillance video of a man they thought was Stewart buying the card, wearing a corrections uniform, and Stump flew down to assist in the arrest.

Stewart was charged with impersonating an officer, soliciting a sexual act and soliciting sexual abuse – but eventually became the only person charged in the incident to be acquitted.

Defense attorney Steve Romines, a specialist in seemingly closed cases, took Stewart’s case. From the beginning, Romines insisted that it was unknown if the man shown on tape buying the calling card in question was actually Stewart.

Then, when investigators claimed to find a calling card at Stewart’s home used in another of the hoax calls, Romines argued that having the card didn’t mean Stewart actually made the call.

In the end, Romines convinced the jury that the evidence – which did not include any witnesses or a recording of the caller’s voice – was insufficient to convict Stewart.

"There are a lot of questions unanswered in this case," Romines told The Associated Press. "The only thing I knew for sure was my client didn't do it."

When asked about the multitude of other cases in which Stewart could be implicated, Romines told the AP “This is the best case they had and we saw how strong it was. If they want to charge him, bring it on.”

Even after the acquittal, prosecutor Mike Mann continued to insist Stewart made the call.

Meanwhile, Ogborn filed her lawsuits -- also naming Summers and another assistant manager. She claimed McDonald’s did not sufficiently warn its employees of the ongoing hoax calls. McDonald’s attorneys claimed that the company had, but managers at the Mt. Washington store failed to relay the information.

McDonald’s attorneys also said anyone in the store, including Ogborn, could’ve stopped the chain of events by refusing to cooperate.

“The person who ought to be punished in this case is the caller who's probably sitting somewhere these past three weeks following this case day by day and laughing at the havoc he's rendered in this courtroom,” McDonald’s attorney W.R. Patterson said.

Ogborn testified that she did not leave the restaurant because she was frightened and the man on the phone told her to cooperate.

After the trial, Ogborn said she felt closure, and intends to go to law school.

"Everybody is still suffering because of this," Ogborn's attorney said. "And now maybe McDonald’s will suffer a little in the pocketbook. The reality is, McDonald's is going to appeal this.”

Patterson addressed the media to thank the judge and jury and express disappointment in the verdict.

The jury found that Summers and the other manager were not liable in Ogborn's suits against them and awared Summers $1.1 million. Summers said she'd use her settlement to take care of her family.

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