I find it interesting that the documentary shows the only person wise enough to realize it was all a hoax was some 50+ year old maintenance guy who picked up the phone to talk to this "cop" and immediately realized this was just a pervert caller.

I mean, seriously, WTF was the manager lady thinking?

I suspect it's a matter of negligence in the same way that it would be negligence not to inform workers of other workplace dangers.

For example, if a mining company receives word that a recent earthquake has destabilized a number of mine shafts, but fails to inform workers of the problem and take reasonable steps to prevent an accident, and someone is subsequently trapped when one of those shafts collapses (which, for the sake of the mine's marital happiness, hopefully takes more than 5 minutes), the mining company could probably be held negligent.

Given the fact that these incidents had been happening for some time, I don't think it's odd to characterize the sort of thing that happened to Ms. Ogburn as a workplace danger--at least in the fast food industry. McDonald's appears to have been aware of the danger, but didn't take appropriate steps to ensure that workers were aware of this kind of hoax, and that managers were not only aware, but trained not to comply with bizarre requests from a supposed law enforcement officer over the phone.

I'm not sure why Summers got an award, either, (and I also hope Thalia will enlighten us), but one thing I am sure about is that her fiance needs to go away (not necessarily to prison, depending on his mental capacity) for a lot longer than 5 years. The man is a proven danger to society, whether he's a sociopath, incapable of normal intellectual function, or just your garden variety rapist.

In regione caecorum, rex est luscus.

The basic principle here is called respondeat superior ("let the master answer"); it comes from the days when tradesmen had to answer for what their apprentices did.  If someone is acting within the scope of employment, you can pretty much always sue the company in addition to the individual.  It's also known, in slightly more cynical circles, as the "deep pockets" principle, i.e. McDonalds has way more money to give this girl than the manager does.  You see this pretty much any time a personal injury suit happens around something someone did while they were at work (e.g. slip and fall cases, that kind of thing; it happens in sexual harassment suits too, I think).

I'm really surprised the manager was given anything; he was the one who couldn't figure out that this was a hoax.  Sure he probably felt like an asshole afterwards, but I don't see why he should be able to recover for that when he was the one who did the deed.

Q: What do you think of western civilization? Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.