Ann Oldfather, who represents Louise Ogborn in a lawsuit against the fast-food giant, told jurors in opening statements that McDonald's withheld or hid evidence of someone pretending to be a police officer calling a restaurant and walking employees through a strip search and sexual abuse of female employees.

Ogborn sued the restaurant chain, claiming the company failed to warn her and other employees about a hoax caller who had already struck other McDonald's stores and other fast-food restaurants across the country.

David Stewart of Fountain, Fla., was acquitted last year on charges of impersonating an officer, soliciting sodomy and soliciting sexual abuse after Ogborn was searched, forced to strip and do calisthenics in a back room at the restaurant.

McDonald's didn't tell anyone about the other incidents during Stewart's trial, Oldfather said.

"As a community, we choose to punish that conduct with a verdict that will get McDonald's attention," Oldfather said.

Ogborn was 18 and working at the Mount Washington McDonald's restaurant in April 2004 when she was detained and forced to strip after a man called the store, claiming he was investigating a theft. The man told an assistant manager to carry out his orders. Ogborn has said at one point during the 3 1/2-hour conversation, the assistant manager's boyfriend was left to handle the phone call.

McDonald's has said Ogborn is responsible for whatever damages she suffered for not realizing the incident was a hoax. Attorneys for the restaurant chain will make opening statements Thursday morning.

Senior Judge Tom McDonald ordered the restaurant chain to disclose all information about previous hoaxes at its restaurants to Ogborn's attorneys, saying the company failed to disclose it had been sued over similar incidents.

McDonald also ordered the company to pay Ogborn's discovery costs and to surrender material that would normally be protected by attorney-client privilege.

Two people pleaded guilty in the case. Donna Jean Summers, the assistant manager, was convicted of unlawful imprisonment. Her former fiancee, Walter Nix Jr., is serving a five-year sentence for sexual abuse and other crimes in the incident.

Summers' attorney, Glenn Cohen, said his client was another victim. Cohen's opening statement echoed Oldfather's, citing McDonald's for failing to properly warn managers of the rash of hoax calls at restaurants around the country.

"McDonald's made the reckless, if not outrageous, decision" not to warn its managers "about the existence of this danger," Cohen said.

Cohen said that Summers and other McDonald's manager duped by the hoax calls were "wracked by guilt."

"Donna has literally been the subject of scorn, of ridicule, she's been ostracized, she's been shunned right here in her own community," Cohen said.