Woman Burned By Taco Bell Bread-Dipping Sauce - She Is Suing

[matcom]

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BRADENTON -- It's been quite a year for Lora Yochim.

In January, she made national headlines by giving birth to quadruplets. Last month, Yochim married her sweetheart, Billy Friddle.

And on Friday, she filed a lawsuit against Taco Bell Corp., seeking more than $15,000 in damages.

Yochim, a Bradenton native, said she suffered a second-degree burn after red breadstick sauce spilled on her right leg in March 2002.

It burned through her blue jeans, according to the suit filed in circuit court. Yochim bought the food at a joint Taco Bell-Pizza Hut restaurant owned and operated by Taco Bell Corp.

She said she had been talking with a lawyer about the incident for several years, and that they had tried to reach a settlement with the company.

Yochim, 33, denied the lawsuit had anything to do with her children.

"I don't want people to think I'm doing this just because of my kids," she said. "It has nothing to do with my babies."

Yochim underwent a Caesarean section Jan. 14 at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. She had not been using fertility drugs, making the quadruplets all the more rare.

Three of the boys are still in the hospital and probably won't be released until April, Yochim said Monday.

The fourth died less than two weeks after he was born.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060321/NEWS/603210348