McDonald?s Corp. (MCD) lost a $27 million jury verdict in Texas over a claim that lax security at one of its restaurants led to the deaths of two teenagers, an award litigators say is unlikely to survive appeal.

The victims in the case were Denton James Ward, 18, who was beaten to death by a mob at a McDonald?s in February 2012, and his girlfriend, Lauren Bailey Crisp, 19, who died in a traffic accident in a futile attempt to bring Ward to a hospital.

The families of both teens sued McDonald?s, claiming the restaurant chain didn?t protect patrons at its College Station, Texas, location even though local police had been repeatedly called to break up fights there.

College Station Police officers testified they regularly were called to the location to break up fights and disperse unsupervised crowds numbering in the hundreds between 2AM and 4AM on weekends.

A Bryan, Texas, state court jury yesterday awarded the Ward family $16 million and the Crisp family $11 million.

The full jury verdict is unlikely to withstand appeals, given the conservative nature of the county where the incident happened and Texas appellate courts, said Houston attorney David Berg, who isn?t involved in the case.

?The jury turned into a lynch mob,? said Berg, the author of ?The Trial Lawyer — What it Takes To Win.? ?Clearly they were very angry. But I don?t think the families will be able to hold onto all of that verdict,? he said in a phone interview.

Despite the location’s history of late-night violence, McDonald’s never hired any security personnel and never installed security cameras to help protect customers.

“We hope this verdict sends a powerful message to McDonald’s and other companies that protecting customers is more important than late-night revenue,” says attorney Chris Hamilton of Dallas’ Standly Hamilton, LLP, lead trial counsel for the teens’ families. “The night these two kids died, this was a dangerous location, and McDonald’s knew it. Yet they did nothing to prevent their senseless deaths.”