Burgers, fries & small claims: franchisee hampered by a flood of suits from litigious diners.

As the owner of eight Burger King franchises in Los Angeles, Ella Avery-Smothers keeps busy making sure there's always plenty of ground beef and french fries stocked in her stores and that the utilities get paid on time.

Too busy, in other words, to be spending half her work week in Small Claims Court dealing with five to 10 lawsuits a month--and often losing.

In the last four months, she has been sued by a woman who claimed she cut her mouth on a piece of plastic in a bacon cheeseburger A man alleged he chipped a tooth biting into a piece of gristle in a hamburger. Two managers have allegedly staged robberies to cover up theft.

And an employee with asthma, who smoked, filed for worker's compensation, claiming chemicals at work caused her breathing problems.

"I am so tired of everybody sugar-coating what we small business owners go through," said Avery-Smothers, 58, who grew up on a tobacco farm in rural Virginia and has been a Burger King owner for 25 years.

It's a familiar lament: lawsuits, frivolous o otherwise, have gotten out of control.

"There's an incredible barrage of unnecessary litigation," said Jonathan Solish, a lawyer who represents franchisers McDonald's Corp., Hilton Hotels Corp. and Ramada Inn. "What ends up happening is franchisees have to make appearances themselves, they run up legal costs, and there's no protection fur their businesses because of so many laws that allow consumers to sue."

'Deep pocket' fallacy

A study commissioned by the International Franchise Association found that consumers often file lawsuits in the belief that the franchiser with "deep pockets", will settle the claims. In fact, most liability claims are on the dime of the franchisee.

Everybody thinks you re rich and the law will back them up," Avery-Smothers added.

In areas with higher rates of poverty, people are even more likely to pursue a claim, Solish said.

Rather than pay for a lawyer, Avery-Smothers enrolled in a year-long paralegal course at UCLA to learn how to fight her own cases. She said all they taught her was how to gouge businesses.

At least two days a week, she has a case that involves waiting in a courtroom and then defending a claim before a judge. She carries a large briefcase with stacks of legal papers around to read during her down time.

She has lots of stories to tell. In April, a customer walked into one of her Burger Kings, poured a Coke on the floor and then tripped on it. He got up and said he was going to sue unless he got a free lunch. An employee refused. The lawsuit is pending.

Just last week, Avery-Smothers spent four hours at Small Claims Court in a case involving a former manager who allegedly stole several deposits but claimed it was a robbery. A judge set the case to go to trial in a month.

"It's gotten to the point where all I'm doing is providing jobs, not making any money," she said.

Avery-Smothers grew up in rural Appalachia, where four of her 11 siblings died as children because of poor medical care. "I know what it's like to be poor," she said. "I went to school with no shoes on my feet. It was abject poverty."

After earning her master's degree from George Washington University, she met her husband Ron, a second lieutenant in the Army who was based at the Pentagon. They moved to Miami, where he worked for Burger King Corp. while she taught at the University of Miami.

It took them six years to scrape together $10,000 to get a franchise.

They built their first store at Crenshaw and Jefferson boulevards, and it was a success. The couple wanted to open another store in downtown Los Angeles, but Burger King wanted them to take over a struggling location in Watts.

"It's not like they were going to give us Beverly Hills," she joked. "You get the worst of the worst--the least-prepared employees, the high cost of turnover, no training, theft. It's what I call the inner-city tax."

Expanding stores

Avery-Smothers turned to Los Angeles LDC Inc., a community development organization that makes low-cost loans, and the Community Redevelopment Agency, which helped her control expenses and turn the franchise around.

With the Watts location on the mend, the couple continued to expand and Avery-Smothers was gaining a reputation as a local business owner. To make customers feel at home, she decorated the walls of her restaurants with prints of African-American and Hispanic art.

Within two years, sales at their store at La Tijera and Centinela boulevards more than tripled. "Those were the good times. We didn't know we had it so good," she said.

Her divorce in 1993 left Avery-Smothers with just two restaurants, while her husband kept six. She set out to open a restaurant every year or two and now has rebuilt her way back with eight franchises in Compton, Inglewood and Los Angeles--and a total workforce of 300.

But competition, robberies and lawsuits are killing her profits, she said.

In Christmas 2001, a robbery turned violent at a downtown Burger King with one of her employees, who was six months pregnant, hit in the head with the butt a gun. The police, trying to track down the perpetrators, wanted to air the store's videotape of the robbery on television. After the tape was shown, several plaintiffs attorneys tracked down the employee and urged her to sue. The employee refused. "She was a good person who didn't try to go for the money," she said. "That was rare, though."

She says that the number of lawsuits filed against her shot up sharply after 9/11 but can't explain why, other than perhaps a mix of fear and economic troubles.

Last year, Avery-Smothers was one of 11,400 Burger franchisees to receive an award for outstanding service to her community. She is a representative of the Burger King Minority Franchise Association and recently established a partnership with one of her district managers, Emily Lopez, to open her eighth restaurant.

But some days, she considers getting out of it altogether. "If I had to start a business right now," she said, "I wouldn't do it."