Genesis Monita, 19, has been awarded $2.7 million after she spilled scalding hot barbeque sauce on her thigh in 2023. The young woman and her sister were on their way to school on May 19, 2023, when they stopped to order breakfast, slathered in the restaurant’s famed hot barbecue sauce, in San Antonio ahead of their school day, according to court filings.
![[Monita and her sister were on their way to school in May 2023, when they stopped to order four breakfast tacos, slathered in BBQ sauce, at Bill Miller in San Antonio (pictured)]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/17/13/newFile.jpg)
She pulled into a parking lot to chow down before the unexpected happened. Monita was left with severe burns as she took a scalding hot 4-ounce plastic cup of barbeque sauce out from her order bag and dropped it haphazardously onto her thigh. Her lawyer, Lawrence Morales II, argued it happened because staff violated policy when they failed to serve the sauce in a Styrofoam container, as was typical as per the food chain’s safety guidelines.
Crucially, Morales stressed that Bill Miller’s policy was to serve their barbeque sauce at a temperature of 165 degrees, and violated critical safety policy when they allowed it to be served at 189 degrees. Monita provided local news with images of her wounds at the time that showed severe injury to her skin and deep tissue bleeding on her upper thigh.
On Thursday, Monita and her mother described how the severe burns led to work and school absences plus an onset of loneliness and depression, for Monita who was 18 at the time. Morales claimed the teen had eaten the sauce previously “a hundred times” and with each time she did, the sauce temperature had remained the same.
