Judge: McD must stand trial in drive-thru killing

Nation's Restaurant News,  Oct 29, 2007  

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PITTSBURGH -- An Allegheny County judge here has rejected McDonald's request to dismiss a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of a college student who was shot and killed seven years ago while waiting in the drive-thru lane of a McDonald's in Wilkinsburg, Pa.

The complaint, filed in 2002, alleges that McDonald's was negligent in the death of Emil Sanielevici because it stopped posting security guards at the restaurant despite its location in a high-crime area.

Ronald Taylor, a local man who went on a shooting rampage the morning of Wednesday, March 1, 2000, that left three people dead, was convicted of murdering Sanielevici and the others in 2001.

McDonald's Restaurants of Pennsylvania Inc. in August asked Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr. to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the company could not have anticipated Taylor's rampage and that the plaintiffs' citing of the restaurant's former practice of posting security guards--which it did only on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights--was a "red herring."

Wettick on Oct. 11 denied McDonald's request and scheduled a pretrial conference for Oct. 31.

Named as co-defendants were Taylor, a mental illness care center and a medical center that also has denied negligence.

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