A Burger King in the Portland area has broken a promise to give a man free meals for life, a lawsuit claims.

Curtis Brooner, 50, is seeking $9,026 -- the estimated cost of Brooner eating one $7.89 Whopper meal a week for the next 22 years.

According to his lawsuit filed Tuesday in Multnomah County Circuit Court, Brooner was granted a lifetime of free meals after he was trapped in a locked restroom at the 2555 N.E. 238th Drive Burger King for more than an hour on Dec. 15.

Brooner says he reeked of urine after he couldn’t get out of what he says was a smelly, confined space.

“It’s the kind of place where you hold your breath: Go in and get out of there as fast as you can,” Brooner told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Wednesday. “That wasn’t an option for me.”

Burger King didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to Brooner and his lawsuit:

Brooner had just finished a meal and stepped into the single-user restroom. When he tried to leave, the lock on the door jammed. After several minutes of trying to get the door to open, he called the phone number on his receipt. Several employees responded, ultimately handing him a hard plastic-edged card and later a fly-swatter and instructions to squeeze it through the crack between the door and the door frame to move the locking mechanism.

In the process, Brooner cut his hand, the suit says. A locksmith ultimately freed him.

Brooner was humiliated as he heard employees and customers laughing on the other side of the locked door, the suit says.

Brooner was too shaken to immediately leave the restaurant -- and that’s when employees gave him a bandage and some ointment for his cut and a manager apologized and offered him a verbal promise that he could always eat there for free, Brooner said.

“She said, ‘Yeah, man. We understand it’s a terrible situation and we want to make it up to you,” he recounted.

Even before the promise, Brooner said, he frequented Burger King nearly every day because he enjoys the food and it’s just one freeway stop from his work in Troutdale. He said after the free-meal promise, he ate there for free every day for the next 13 days, with the exception of Dec. 24 and Dec. 25. Twice, he ate breakfast and dinner there on the same day, he said.

But when he went in on Dec. 28, Brooner said, he was told “district management” had yanked the free-meal pledge.

His lawsuit asks a judge to order Burger King to reinstate the promise or pay him the $9,026.

The suit says the lock that trapped Brooner inside the restroom appears to have trapped others inside before him because it “showed signs of damage caused by other people who had previously been locked inside the bathroom.” The suit claims Burger King was negligent in not fixing it.

“They created an unsafe environment,” Brooner said. “Someone could have had a medical situation. You could have had a fatality. You could have had a child locked in there, someone elderly. They are lucky it was me.”

Court records show Brooner was convicted in 1994 of first-degree sexual abuse and first-degree sexual penetration for crimes committed in 1992 in Multnomah County. He was sentenced to about 6 ½ years in prison and a requirement to register as a sex offender, which he says is for life. Brooner said the convictions are 25 years old and he’s lived a law-abiding life with no convictions since then.

Portland attorney Michael Fuller is representing Brooner. Read the lawsuit here.

-- Aimee Green

agreen@oregonian.com

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