A seventy-nine-year-old lady, Stella Liebeck, purchased coffee at a McDonald’s drive-through and happened to spill it on herself, thus suffering burns. Consequently, she filed a suit against McDonald’s and hired a clever attorney in order to successfully convince the jury that Mcdonald’s was at serious fault for not making sufficient available warning that hot coffee is without a doubt hot and can burn you severely. The seventy-nine-year-old walked away with a multi-million dollar reward.
The case has illuminated the severely inadequate justice system with everything wrong prevalent in it, ranging from ‘frivolous lawsuits,’ immoral lawyers, untrustworthy judges, to insatiable petitioners who conveniently put their own blame on others and are aided by clever judges to support the entire foul practice.
Even after a gap of nearly ten years, civil justice and jury critics still ridicule the ‘Stella Lieback and McDonald’s case of coffee by terming it as ridiculous and frivolous!
What is very surprising, though, is the fact that the testimony and actions of McDonald’s’ very own staff proved instrumental in leading the jury to rule against it and subsequently in favor of the opponent. One cannot, however, ignore the third-degree burns that Stella had incurred across her groin, inner thighs, and even her buttocks.
Stella Liebeck, a resident of Albuquerque in New Mexico, was seated in the passenger seat of her grandson’s car, ordered a cup of coffee from the drive-through window of the local McDonald’s restaurant. The coffee was served in a Styrofoam cup with a warning on the lid indicating that the contents of the cup were ‘H.O.T.’ in small uppercase letters. Stella placed the coffee between her knees with the purpose of opening the lid and adding cream and sugar to it. While doing so, the entire coffee spilled on her lap and within a matter of ninety seconds spread to her groin and her inner thighs, and the sweatpants which she was wearing absorbed the coffee and held it close to her skin, causing third-degree burns on nearly sixteen percent of her skin.
The critics of civil justice very often press charges that either Stella was driving the car or that the car was in motion when the coffee was spilled, neither of which is actually true. When the grandson received the order, he had pulled the car forward and momentarily stopped it in order to enable his grandmother to add cream and sugar to the coffee.
Following this injury, Stella Liebeck was hospitalized, and a vascular surgeon determined that she had incurred third-degree burns over 6 percent of her body, including her inner thighs, the perineum, the buttocks, and the genital and groin areas. Stella was hospitalized for eight days for treatment, including the grafting of skin and treatments involving the surgical removal of tissue.
Initially, Stella had claimed $20,000, which was outright refused by McDonald’s.
McDonald’s reacted by producing documents showing that more than 700 claims had been made by people burned due to its coffee in the period between 1982 and 1992, including claims which involved third-degree burns significantly similar to Liebeck’s. This history which documented McDonald’s knowledge about the extent and nature of this hazard, considerably worked against them. During this discovery, McDonald’s also disclosed that its coffee is held between 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit (on the advice of a consultant) so as to maintain the optimal taste. There were reports and evidence of other establishments which sell coffee at considerably lower temperatures than at McDonald’s, and even the coffee which is served at home is usually between 135 to 140 degrees.
The quality assurance manager of McDonald’s confirmed that danger of burn does exist with any food substance which is served at 140 degrees or above, and as such, the coffee served at McDonald’s was unfit for drinking since it would burn the mouth and throat.
He additionally accepted that the company aggressively implements a prerequisite that coffee has to be held at 185 degrees, five degrees plus or minus, and further stated that while burns would take place, McDonald’s had no intention of dropping the “holding temperature” of its coffee. Stella’s expert, who was an intellectual in the domain of thermodynamics as applied to human skin burns, confirmed that liquids at 180 degrees would cause full-thickness burn to a person’s skin within two to seven seconds.
Other evidence proved that as the temperature reduces near 155 degrees, the degree of the burn also reduces significantly. Hence, if Liebeck’s coffee was at 155 degrees, it would have cooled, and she could have got sufficient time to circumvent a severe burn.
In view of all these facts, the jury decided to award Stella Liebeck a sum of $200,000 as compensation for the physical damages. However, this amount was reduced by 20% by the jury to $160,000 because the jury established that Liebeck also shared a 20 percent responsibility in the spill out. Liebeck was additionally awarded a sum of $2.7 million by the jury as to punitive charges, equating to about two days sales of McDonald’s coffee basically as the penalty of McDonald’s for its insensitive conduct towards Mrs. Liebeck and its years of overlooking hundreds of similar damages. The amount was, however, reduced by the trial judge to $480,000, but after further negotiation, Mrs. Liebeck eventually received $640,000.
A subsequent investigation after the verdict found that the temperature of the coffee at the local Albuquerque McDonald’s considerably dropped to 158 degrees Fahrenheit. The policies of the corporation as a whole ultimately changed, which now explicitly prohibits serving coffee at the scorching high temperature that damaged Mrs. Liebeck, thus directly preventing many potential injuries and certainly serving as a warning to many other restaurants too.
So the bottom line is that the case was not about a gold-digger or a defendant that was unduly penalized based on insubstantial ploys. In fact, a huge company like McDonald’s had intentionally wronged hundreds of people like the straight consequence of an unnecessarily hazardous company strategy and was at last held responsible by one of the sufferers.
Needless to say, the loss to McDonald’s rapidly vanished in its fiscal report, in which million is the unit of reporting and not the dollar. Mrs. Liebeck’s monetary gain barely enriched her but most definitely provided as rational recompense for her wide-ranging medicinal bills, not to mention the terrible pain and suffering that her injury must be caused her not only physically but mentally as well.
If I did own a small restaurant, I would most definitely change the policy of serving food at scorching temperatures, no matter how this change would affect the business or how much benefit the competitors would gain due to this, for the simple reason that providence of food serves not only as a profit-making business but is also recognized as a virtuous deed of feeding people even if by way of selling. In a business that directly involves people of all ages, from the young to the old, utmost care and attention needs to be paid to the policies and programs involving their safety. As such, harm arising due to one’s negligence, to any living being, in any possible way should at all-time be avoided; as the wise saying goes, ‘Prevention is better than cure.
References
ATLA fact sheet. 1995, 1996 by Consumer Attorneys of California Article “The famous/infamous “McDonald’s Coffee Spill Lawsuit” revisited”. Web.
Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants, P.T.S., Inc., No. D-202 CV-93-02419, 1995 WL 360309 (Bernalillo County, N.M. Dist. Ct. 1994).
Wall Street Journal article (#1994 WL-WSJ 342815). Web.