A New York man is suing McDonald’s after a stray slice of American cheese on his Big Mac allegedly sent him into acute anaphylactic shock, a life-threatening condition that can turn deadly within minutes .
The sandwich had Charles Olsen, a twentysomething music producer who is severely allergic to dairy products, on the brink of respiratory failure, according to his legal team and a lawsuit filed Friday in New York State Supreme Court .
“We’re just so grateful that Mr. Olsen is still with us,” Olsen’s attorney Jory Lange told The Daily Beast, adding that he and co-counsel Scott Harford are presently working with several families who have in fact lost loved ones to hidden food allergens.
The McDonald’s Corporation and The Colley Group, the family business that owns the McDonald’s franchise in question, did not respond to requests for comment from The Daily Beast. Both are named as defendants in the suit.
The Colley Group’s polo-playing COO , Bruce Colley, made headlines two decades ago when he was blamed for breaking up future New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s marriage to Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, the seventh of Robert F. Kennedy’s 11 children. He and the closely-held company were back in the news a few years later, when workers at a Colley McDonald’s in Washington Heights walked off the job and demanded air conditioning following the hospitalization of a colleague who fainted in the sweltering kitchen during a heat wave . The family was once again the subject of intense local interest in 2015, when family matriarch Lois Colley was fatally bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher by a disgruntled employee . The Colleys are “one of the largest private owners of restaurants in the United States,” according to an April 2023 press release regarding one of Bruce Colley’s overseas development projects.