From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Melissa Vargas.

Dallas Cowboys wide receivers/passing game coach Todd Haley (above, left) filed a personal injury lawsuit Thursday against a Southlake McDonalds, alleging that his wife and au pair found a dead rat in their take-out salad in June, court documents show.

Todd Haley, his wife, Christine Haley, and their au pair, Kathryn Kelley, are suing the eating establishment and its franchise owner KBL Group and Ken Lobato for a minimum of $1.7 million in physical and mental pain and anguish, alleging the restaurant was negligent in preparing the salad and failed to have safeguards against rodents.

According to the lawsuit filed in Tarrant County, on June 5 Christine Haley ordered $14 worth of food, including the salad, at the drive-through at 2155 West Southlake Blvd. She took the food home, where she and Kelley began eating out of the salad bowl. The women ate a few bites before they uncovered what they later determined to be a stiff young roof rat on its back, with its whiskers intact and its mouth agape. The women gagged and vomited repeatedly, the lawsuit alleges.

Christine Haley telephoned Lobato to complain, and he drove to her Southlake home to see the dead rodent, the lawsuit said..

œHe said rather wryly that a dead rat in a salad could have happened to them at Ruth™s Chris Steak House in Dallas, the lawsuit alleges. œThat perverse attitude gave no comfort to [Haley or Kelley].

Aside from finding this story quite shocking —- who knew that Bill Parcells’ assistants were so poorly paid they’d be eating at McDonald’s? — there’s not much else to add besides letting you know that Richard Linklatter’s “Fast Food Nation” opens November 17.