Threat Of Lawsuit Ends Restaurant's Tradition Of Free Turkey Dinners

PHOENIX - For 13 years, John and Nicole Petculescu opened their little diner to cook up a hot, hearty Thanksgiving meal for those who couldn't do it for themselves.

But not this year.

The Romanian immigrants who just wanted to say "thank you" to America for taking them in have ended their tradition because one diner threatened a lawsuit over a stomachache.

"I'm sorry I can't do it any more because I'm really scared," John Petculescu said in a telephone interview from his City Cafe in Kingman, a desert town in west-central Arizona. "Everybody's suing everybody."

Last year the couple and volunteers fed 1,600 of their poor or homebound neighbors in this town on Old Route 66 near the Nevada and California lines.

The Petculescus still plan to donate turkeys. But this year they'll send them out raw instead of cooking and serving them at the City Cafe.

"I'm going to buy the 45 turkeys and whoever calls me, I'll deliver them. I'll say, `Here's your turkey. You cook it. Thank you,' " Petculescu said.

A homeless man who identified himself only as Rich said the lawsuit threat has robbed Kingman's destitute of a welcome bit of holiday cheer.

"A lot of us had no where else to go except there," Rich said. "I probably would have ended up panhandling and digging through the Dumpster or something to get something to eat. I'm not proud to say that, but a person's got to eat."

The Petculescus had assembled a group of four cooks and 16 volunteers to prepare the meals and deliver to those who couldn't make it to the City Cafe. With just two ovens, it cost them nearly $2,000 and took them a week to prepare everything: turkey, mashed potatoes, vegetables, stuffing and pie.

The Petculescus, who paid for the meal themselves, usually serve about 150 or 200 people a day in the cafe.

Last Thanksgiving, after serving 1,100 in the restaurant and sending out another 500 meals, they got an anonymous call from an angry eater with an upset stomach.

The person threatened to sue, though no lawsuit was ever filed. Petculescu waited nervously for more calls from others who had feasted on his meal.

No one else called. That's when Petculescu got suspicious.

If it really were food poisoning, he said, others who ate the same meal probably would have been sick as well.

"That was enough for me. Someone else might get the idea and try to sue too," he said.