McDonald’s has agreed to pay $700,000 in order to settle a suit over an improperly prepared chicken sandwich. The sandwich wasn’t undercooked and the customer didn’t get sick—the claim involved the Dearborn, Mich. franchise’s promise to prepare food according to Islamic dietary laws.

Two Detroit-area McDonald’s owned by Finley’s Management Co. sell halal products to the nation’s largest Arab and Muslim community. According to Islamic law, God’s name must be invoked before an animal providing meat for consumption is slaughtered.

But when Dearborn Heights resident Ahmed Ahmed bought a chicken sandwich in 2011 and found it wasn’t halal, he contacted attorney Kassem Dakhlallah. Dakhlallal conducted an investigation into the two McDonald’s locations that advertise all Chicken McNuggets and McChickens are halal and found one Dearborn location sold non-halal products when it ran out of halal.

According to a letter Dakhallah’s firm sent McDonald’s Corp. and Finley’s Management, “a source familiar with the inventory” confirmed the restaurant sold non-halal food “on many occasions.”

Dakhlallah filed suit in Wayne County Circuit Court in November 2011 as part of a class action. The $700,000 settlement is expected to be finalized March 1 and will be shared between Ahmed, lawyers, a Detroit health clinic and the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn.

Dakhlallah told the Associated Press he is “thrilled” with the preliminary deal in which neither McDonald’s nor Finley’s admits to any liability.

[Image via hxdbzxy/Shutterstock]