Hot Coffee

America is headed to hell in a hand basket. How do I know? Well, simple stupid. I’ve gotten the same e-mail four times this week about frivolous lawsuits. Apparently, what’s technically “wrong” with my nation is that we don’t have a “cap” on damages so that people won’t be able to file these lawsuits that plug up the judicial system and keep “important things” from getting a fair hearing. Haven’t you heard the one about the lady that spilled coffee on her lap, and then SUED the restaurant because the coffee was hot and it (DUH) burned her?

The e-mail annoys me.

Not because I don’t think that some lawsuits are out of control, but because the case that many of these misinformed people are citing, simply doesn’t live up to the bogus claims they are trying to make.

The coffee story falls in the category of shit reasonable people should look up for themselves. The people who interject this example in conversations with me in real life piss me off the most, because to a PERSON, none of them has been able to tell me where the case was, who the lady was, WHY the jury felt compelled to give her so much fucking money, or why the assumption is that the case was such a miscarriage of justice. They’re just repeating what they’ve heard on some talk radio show like so many lemmings.

Well, I’m that guy that DOES on occasion make enough time to look up shit I hear, although the all-time record for THAT personality trait goes to my friend Becky, who literally writes down every bar argument on a damn napkin, looks up the answer, and then e-mails it to everyone who was involved in the argument.

Why didn’t you put THAT in your list of shit that makes you weird, huh??? ;-)

As a public service, I’m going to share the results of MY google search with you here--not because I think “you” wouldn’t look it up for yourself, but because I “did” … and believe that the truth should be at LEAST as available as the bullshit.

Summary:

The real life case is Liebeck v. McDonalds restaurants. It was filed in New Mexico sometime after February of 1992, when the original incident occurred.

The basic facts are that Ms. Liebeck, a 79-year old lady, spilled her coffee in the drive-through of a McDonalds restaurant. Her son was driving the car. The coffee burned her and she subsequently sued the restaurant. A jury awarded her $200,000 in compensatory damages and a $2.7 million punitive add on.

The spin that keeps showing up in my in-box goes pretty much like this:

“This is why the nation is going to hell in a hand-basket. Everybody knows that coffee is hot! Frivolous lawsuits are ruining the country. Capitalism is threatened because businesses can’t just “do” business, make money, and provide jobs with all these ambulance-chasing lawyers running around suing everybody?”

I call bullshit.

* McDonalds was serving their coffee at a “holding temperature” of 180° – 190° Fahrenheit. Your coffee pot at home is designed to brew your joe to about 140°. At 185° liquid takes less than seven seconds to consume human flesh and muscle tissue in third degree burns.

(It’s actually about two seconds, but I want to be fair.)

That time matters, because the longer it takes for the fluid to completely scald your skin, the more time you have to wipe it up and avoid some of the burns.

As it gets cooler, the amount of time it takes to seriously burn you decreases exponentially every five degrees or so. “Safe” liquids for human consumption are in the 140° to 150° range. A person cannot DRINK 180° coffee until it cools down.

* In THIS case, the old lady suffered “full thickness” burns over six percent of her body (‘third degree’ in layman speak).

And for the record, if you allowed me to “pick” the six percent of ME that was going to be burned … this ain’t the demographic I would pick.

Her affected parts were the inner thighs, perineum, buttocks, genital, and groin regions. Doctors had to scrape off the dead skin, in a painful debridement procedure. She then had to go through eight days worth of skin graft surgeries.

*Ms. Liebeck initially asked McDonalds for $20,000 to cover her $11,000 medical bills, some pain and suffering. They offered her $800. She refused it, and a now-famous lawsuit was born.

She got a lawyer.

He offered to settle for $90,000. The golden arches company said no.

It’s interesting at this point to note that in the decade before this case, the restaurant had received about 700 complaints about the temperature of its coffee. Some of those cases had resulted in settlements totaling about half a million dollars.

In fairness to Mickey D’s … those complaints represented about one complaint for every 24,000,000 cups of coffee sold. So there ARE literally millions of people who drink, enjoy, and take no issue with the temperature of the coffee at McDonalds. It has been McDonald's policy to pay for medical costs when one of THEIR employees has spilled the coffee. I believe this is actually a very reasonable policy.

Their further position in this case is that the cup is labeled "hot." Also true. They point out that her cotton sweatpants also played a role in the severity of her burns. We have a trifecta of truth.

And a conflict.

Ronald McDonald’s lawyers chose to take their chances at trial. That was certainly WELL within their rights.

Her attorney asked the jury to award her damages, and to punish McDonald’s by giving her a day or two worth of McDonald’s coffee sale revenue, which total $1.35 million dollars every 24 hours.

After listening to both sides, the jury sided with the complaintant and awarded Ms. Liebeck $200,000 in compensation, and two days of McDonald’s coffee profits, an additional $2.7M.

The jury ALSO said that Ms. Liebeck was 20% responsible for the accident, and reduced the award to $160,000 plus the punitive damages.

The judge reduced the punitive award to three times the actual damages for a sum of $480,000.

McDonald’s chose not to appeal, and the actual payment sum was reached in private negotiations.

So where exactly is the hand basket? This case seems downright “fair” to me, and I don’t even BELIEVE in fair. Someone believed something wrong was done to them, and took the grievance to court. A jury heard the evidence, voted their opinion, and turned the result over to a judge, who modified it, and entered it. What's the problem?

I’m a free speech guy, so I’d never expect people to stop TELLING this story. But if you’re one of the people who use this story in day-to-day conversation, at least NOW you know parts of the rest of it.

And if you find yourself tempted to e-mail this example to me, please don’t. I’ve already seen it.

Sources:

http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp
http://www.canf.bc.ca/briefs/mcdonalds.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's_coffee_case
http://www.offthekuff.com/mt/archives/001070.html
http://caoc.com/CA/index.cfm?event=showPage&pg=facts
http://www.overlawyered.com/2003/12/mcdonalds_coffee_revisited.html