I began to research an article on stupid lawsuits recently. Everyone knows that when one mentions the words stupid lawsuits, McDonalds and hot coffee is usually the first images that pops into ones mind. After all, coffee drinkers have complained that since 1994, they can no longer get a hot cup of coffee from McDonalds or any other fast-food drive through.

The “McDonalds Lawsuit,” which played itself out in August of 1994 in America’s Legal system, is what many American’s say is what is wrong with our judicial system today. What I found while looking into the foolish lawsuits, including the “McDonalds Lawsuit”, was that I had been mislead by the media and had unintentionally misconstrued many facts related to this particular lawsuit over the past thirteen years.

Facts that no one has made any real effort to clarify for the last decade and the media has managed to perpetuate into almost urban legend status. The information when fully examined paints a different portrait, one that shows an 81-year-old woman, who is a burn victim, not a money hungry thrill seeker, as the media and the legal system would like us to believe.

The 81-year old woman is Stella Liebeck who suffered third-degree burns, on her lower extremities, including, her groin, thighs, and buttocks after buying a forty-nine cent cup of coffee at a McDonalds drive thru. As she tried to remove the lid to add cream and sugar, she spilled the coffee onto her legs. Third-degree burns are the worst burns one can suffer. Stella’s burns needed a surgical procedure called a skin graft. She remained hospitalized for over a week. Stella Liebeck’s medical bills reached nearly 20,000 dollars.

After leaving the hospital, Stella asked McDonalds to pay for her medical bills, and only filed a lawsuit when McDonalds refused to pay any of her medical expenses. At 81 years old, this was the first time Stella Liebeck had ever sued anyone. Yet, this was one of over 700 burn cases involving McDonalds Coffee.

Ironically, the law firm that took on the case of defending the McDonalds Corporation in the Stella Liebeck personally injury suit decided to have a law student go from McDonald’s to McDonalds and take coffee temperatures. At the time, they decided to do this they had no idea on the impact their decision might have in the end.

On average, McDonald’s coffee was 20 to 30 degrees hotter than anyone else’s coffee. Typically, the temperature of a cup of coffee from McDonalds in 1994 was a whooping 185 degree when poured. The coffee perked at 205 degrees, according to the law student’s survey. This information was the same information in McDonald’s corporate training manual, which the corporation gave to both sides of the trial.

The jurors awarded Stella Liebeck 2.7 million dollars in damages. Jurors who at the beginning of the trial had reservations about why they were even wasting their time over spilled coffee. Then the jurors saw evidence of the severity of Stella’s burns in photographs and realized that coffee at 190 degrees can cause severe third-degree burns in less than three seconds.

The jurors stated that in the end their rationalization for penalizing McDonalds with such a stiff penalty was because of the 700 plus cases McDonalds had settled out of court over the previous years because of burns from their coffee. Jurors felt McDonalds was willful, wanton, and malicious in not changing their coffee temperature before Stella’s incident, since evidence shows there have been 700 other cases involving burns.

McDonald’s was to pay Stella 2.7 million dollars, which equaled two days of coffee sales, yet the judge lowered the amount to 480,000 dollars after the trial. In the end, the final amount both parties agreed on was substantially less than the 480,000, and is an unpublished amount. This is a fact that many people are unaware of about this case. Both of these mechanisms are part of our legal system that is a built in balancing feature preventing outlandish settlements if necessary.

Now that you are aware of all the facts, do you feel this is a foolish lawsuit? What would you do you if you were Stella Liebeck back in 1994? Please feel free to go to the Crime Forum and post your feelings in the Stella Liebeck/McDonalds Lawsuit Forum and give us your opinion in this case.