Usually, when one sees “McDonald’s” and “New York City” in the same sentence, it is a description of the latest attack on the fast-food industry by soon-to-be-former mayor Michael Bloomberg. However, in this child custody case reported by the New York Post, it is the refusal of the father in the middle of a divorce to take his son to the land of the Golden Arches that is the issue:

Attorney David Schorr slapped a court-appointed shrink with a defamation lawsuit for telling the judge deciding a custody battle with his estranged wife that he was an unfit parent — for refusing to take his son to the fast food joint for dinner. “You’d think it was sexual molestation,” Schorr, 43, told The Post Thursday. “I am just floored by it.” Schorr says in his Manhattan Supreme Court suit that E. 97th Street psychiatrist Marilyn Schiller filed a report saying he was “wholly incapable of taking care of his son” and should be denied his weekend visitation over the greasy burger ban. Schorr, a corporate attorney turned consultant with degrees from NYU and Oxford University, had planned to take his 4-year-old son to their usual restaurant, the Corner Café on Third Avenue, for his weekly Tuesday night visitation last week. But the boy threw a temper tantrum and demanded McDonald’s. So he gave his son an ultimatum: dinner anywhere other than McDonald’s — or no dinner. “The child, stubborn as a mule, chose the ‘no dinner’ option,” the disgruntled dad says in the suit.

I’ve heard of some nasty divorces, but this one comes very close to taking the cake. Summarizing what happened after Schorr dropped off his son, his son told his mother, who has primary custody of him, that his father refused to take him to McDonald’s. The mother got the court to appoint the psychiatrist at a cost to the father. The psychiatrist only interviewed the child and the mother before telling the court that due at least in part to the refusal of the father to acquiesce to the child’s out-of-the-ordinary demand of McDonald’s, he should be denied his visitation rights.

I guess in New York City, it is now damned if you do, damned if you don’t. We’ll know for certain in December when the judge decides on the issue.