How do you know
what you know?
--Elizabeth Lewis, and countless other Criminal Justice
professors
Oftentimes, when someone is arguing that Americans are weak,
whiny losers who seek to blame someone else for their own shortcomings, they
use the McDonald’s hot coffee lawsuit to support the argument.
This case is more than 20 years old now, but we still hear
about it nearly every day. Twice this week, I heard someone use it as an example
of: 1) How Americans are unwilling to take responsibility for their own
well-being AND 2) How this often translates into frivolous lawsuits with
outrageous payouts, which harms honest, hardworking Americans and the
corporations who love them.
Whether we agree with the above conclusions or not, this
case fascinates me because, well, pretty much everything we “know” about the
lawsuit is wrong, and yet that doesn’t stop us from trotting it out as a perfect
example of why we need tort reform, why class warfare is harming America, etc.
When you examine the facts of this case, it’ll make you
wonder: What else am I wrong about? Am I basing other beliefs on bad timber? How
do I know what I know?
On February 27, 1992, a 79-year-old Albuquerque grandmother,
Stella Liebeck, ordered coffee at a McDonald’s drive-through. After they got
their food, her grandson, who was driving, parked the car so that Mrs. Liebeck
could safely remove the lid to add cream and sugar. When she removed the lid,
Mrs. Liebeck spilled the coffee on her lap, and she was burned.
Now, so far, this sounds like an unfortunate mishap. After
all, most of us have spilled drive-through food on ourselves, but we don’t go
and file a lawsuit over it, do we? More to the point, is it really McDonald’s
fault? Everyone knows that coffee is hot. Isn’t it ridiculous to hold the
restaurant owners responsible for our clumsiness when they’re simply giving us
what we asked for—a hot beverage to go? I don’t care if you are somebody’s
grandma: You don’t deserve millions of dollars because you spilled your coffee
on your lap, right?
But wait, there’s more:
During the previous 10 years, more than 700 customers showed
McDonald’s that they had been burned—sometimes severely—by McDonald’s coffee.
Nevertheless, McDonald’s continued to require franchisees to serve the coffee
at temperatures of at least 180 degrees, which causes 3rd degree
burns like those Mrs. Liebeck suffered.
In fact, Mrs. Liebeck suffered 3rd degree burns
on her thighs, buttocks, and private parts. She required painful skin grafts, hospitalization,
and follow-up treatment for more than two years. Still, she didn’t sue at
first. She simply asked McDonald’s—not for millions of dollars—but for $20,000.
She offered proof that this was the actual amount of her medical bills and lost
wages, and she asked for no more than this. McDonald’s refused to pay, and
offered $800 instead.
At this point, she sued. A McDonald’s quality control
executive took the stand and conceded that, while McDonald’s was aware of the
700+ prior scaldings, the company decided not change their practices and had
more pressing dangers about which to worry. The jury awarded Mrs. Liebeck
$200,000 in compensatory damages (medical bills, lost wages, decreased
function), which was later reduced to $160,000. They also awarded her $2.5
million in punitive damages (“punitive” is “to punish”—in other words, to make
McDonald’s hurt enough so that they would change their practices). The jury
arrived at this figure by calculating two days’ of McDonald’s coffee sales.
This award was later reduced to less than $480,000. After more legal wrangling,
the parties settled out of court for a lesser amount, bringing the total paid
to Mrs. Liebeck to less than $600,000.
Is less-than-$600,000 a fair price for scalded genitals,
hospitalization, disability, medical and legal bills, and the stress of months
or years of court appearances, depositions, etc.? Maybe or maybe not, but I
think this at least shows that Mrs. Liebeck is not an irresponsible, clumsy
chiseler who conned an innocent corporation into giving her a lotto-style
payout.
How do you know
what you know?
