The overview given of the Liebeck case is quite biased, I think, and ignores one simple fact - IF YOU GET BURNED FROM COFFEE BECAUSE YOU'RE DUMB ENOUGH TO PUT IT IN BETWEEN YOUR LEGS IN A MOVING VEHICLE, YOU DESERVE WHAT YOU GET.

I disagree that people who engage in stupid behavior should be allowed a broad "expectation of risk" whereby the rest of the world is expected to wet-nurse the feeble-minded through life. Some coffee is served very hot, and thus dangerous. I've experienced this with homemade coffee, at Starbucks, and in numerous other places. If you choose to be reckless around hot liquids, and it turns out that the liquid is hotter than you thought, I fail to see how anybody else is reponsible for that but you.

The argument you post just proves my point that the tort system has been organized as to chip away at individual responsibility, and it doesn't explain why the US must commit so much of its GDP to civil litigation. Punitive damages are only a part of the story - non-economic damages can likewise be excessive or downright ridiculous in certain cases.

Owen, you jsut don't get it. Let me speak here as a former restaurant owner, as well as a (usually defense) attorney. The NORMAL temperature to serve coffee is about 145 degrees. Spilling coffee that hot on youself won't cause serious injury. If the coffee served to Ms. Liebeck had been that temperature, and she sued, then of course the case would ahve been silly--but by the same token, she wouldn't have been injured. The crucial point here is that McDonalds caused Ms. Liebeck's injuries by failing to follow industry standards. And youseem to think that putting the coffee between her legs was foolish--and maybe it was, that's why the verdict was reduced for comparative negligence--but note that her injuries would have beenmore horrific if she had been foolish enough to actually drink the stuff.

You talk about how the tort system is supposedly organized to chip away at personal responsibility--but you seem to think that responsibility is a one-way street. What you are really saying is that sellers should have no responsibility for selling unreasonably dangerous products, and that all the responsiblity should be on the consumer.

Don't bother, rea. Owen's like every other tort-reform-favoring conservative I've ever run into--the clue bus about PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY including the legal persons called corporation simply doesn't stop at his corner.

And, of course, there are no economic effects whatsoever from large corporations selling defective products that injure or kill people without any liability therefore. That doesn't distort the system at all.

There is no regulatory agency that establishes set temperatures for coffee, and the needs of regular restaurants and drive-through fast food windows differ on this point (in restaurants everybody drinks their coffee then and there, with McDonald's, some customers wait until they reach their destination).

When I get a hot liquid - before I do anything else - I taste it. Sometimes I get scalding hot liquids, sometimes lukewarm. Still, my safety with regards to hot liquids is my responsibility, and I have no expectation that coffee will be at a reduced temperature. This case was simply a farce on those grounds. There was no "defective product," just a product used irresponsibly.

I would call the recent case against against Valor corp, however, a more egregious example of abuses in the tort system. Furthermore, I find it suspicious that everyone is focusing on the anecdotal case of Liebeck v. McDonald's while ignoring the objective evidence of the inordinate amount of our GDP going towards civil litigation.

"Furthermore, I find it suspicious that everyone is focusing on the anecdotal case of Liebeck v. McDonald's while ignoring the objective evidence of the inordinate amount of our GDP going towards civil litigation."

Did he just say that? Did a conservative just criticize opponents of tort reform for bringing up the Liebeck case?

Owen, define "inordinate". Does it mean "any"?

What would be an ordinate amount of GDP going towards lost productivity due to lack of personal responsibility on the part of corporations?

Charles is a Liberal, I am a conservative; he thinks the death penalty is acceptable I don't. We agree on one thing, tort reform under the guise of the MacDonald's case is a very bad deal. I have spent my working life in the law. With very few exceptions, juries see the case for what it is; awards damages based upon the evidence and sometimes acts as the conscience of the nation. Don't ever forget, a jury verdict is appealable, reversable and able to be reduced. The "run away" jury is the exception not the rule. Who really wins with "tort reform"? Certainly not the injured plaintiffs. Who benefits from "damage caps"? Again, not the plaintiffs. Until there is more corporate responsibility, consumer safety and better product R & D, there better be juries to impose sanctions. If you want to know about corporate response to defective products, read all about Lee Iacoca and the Ford Pinto and the decision to defend the lawsuits since it was cheaper than to repair the design defect.

Dud,

I agree with you, though it seems to me you're using entirely the wrong emphasis. In cases such as the McDonald's one, people who are skeptical of lawsuit's don't want the injured to be reimbursed when they see it as a their fault. That's considered the problem.

What I would say is that yes, the injured lose and the companies win but most importantly, consumers at large lose because it doesn't motivate companies to build safe products. For instance, I find it abhorrant that someone who spilled hot coffee on themselves was financially rewarded. At the same time, I'm not sorry McDonald's had to shell out the money because then, perhaps next time, they'll start being more careful.

Tort creates safer products. That needs to be the anti-reform slogan, repeated often.

Joe,

Keep up with the discussion. I have droned on and on about the Liebeck case, while nobody has even offered so much as an argument on the point that the US spends a larger percentage of its GDP on torts than any other industrialized nation. If as liberal a civil courts system as we have is necessary to keep corporations in line, then how are other nations getting by with far more a far more restrictive system?

Wageslave,

No, I'm not arguing for killing all civil ligitation, just limiting it. I feel that a better place to hold companies and individuals responsible is by enacting regulations and holding people responsible in that regard. The McDonald's coffee case is a perfect example - if hot coffee is believed to be an eggregious safety violation, then why aren't there laws against it? McDonald's just wanted people using their drive-through to have hot coffee when they got to work, and assumed that if anyone spilled it on themselves, that would be their own fault. In the absense of an objective standard, they were unjusty punished.

I think we can have an effect torts system, just like every other industrialized nation has, and still allow for restrictions on punitive damages and frivalous lawsuits. If even a small percentage of civil court rulings are hideously unjust, that's too many, and action must be taken to correct that situation.

Alex,

I agree that torts create safer products. I disagree that you need a "sky's the limit" view of punitive and non-economic damages to have safer products through the civil courts. Moreover, not all torts involve corporations at all. A massive number of them involves doctors, which even you admit is making malpractice insurance spin out of control. If nothing else, I'd like tort reform to have a strong presence in the area of medicine.

Furthermore, you have to look at other issues - with the tabacco lawsuits, even people who knew that smoking was dangerous are getting multi-billion dollar verdicts. They're even beginning to use the same angle on fast food. With the gun industry, we just had the first successful lawsuit against Valor Corporation for simply making the gun that Nathan Brazille used to kill his teacher. How many other lawyers will use that case to blame others gun manufacturers for crimes using their products?

Dud was right. These cases are the exceptions, but they have a vast influence on personal responsibility and the way free enterprise operates. We both agree that the courts should function as a check on private entities, but my view is that they are being counterproductive when they operate sans significant restrictions. I don't see how allowing for reasonable caps and taking action to keep frivalous lawsuits out of the courts need crush legitimate cases. I don't see why the US alone needs this incredibly liberal torts system.

Owen:

The car wasn't moving when the coffee spilled.

See this account of the case for more details, mostly reiterating what Chuck's original post said.

Owen:

"the US spends a larger percentage of its GDP on torts than any other industrialized nation"

Citation, please. With numbers and methodology.

"Citation, please. With numbers and methodology."

I'd like to see that as well, if only out of curiosity.

As for malpractice insurance, the idea that premiums have been increasing due to runaway malpractice settlements/verdicts is just flat wrong. Malpractice awards have stayed pretty much flat when medical services inflation is taken into account, and the recent premium hikes can be tied pretty directly to loss of investment income.

http://insurance-reform.org/pr/AIRMountingEvidence.pdf

http://insurance-reform.org/StableLosses.pdf

This is the report cited in the report I linked to.

Greg Morrow:

I initially saw this fact pointed out in Robert Bork's Slouching Towards Gommorrah, although I've also seen it cited in other sources. The conservative National Center for Policy Analysis, for example, notes the following three facts:

- As of 1994, total costs of the U.S. tort system were estimated at $152 billion -- 2.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

- This compares to an average cost of 0.9 percent of GDP for 11 other industrialized nations, including the U.K., France, Australia and West Germany.

- The highest-cost country outside the U.S. is Italy -- in which lawsuits cost only 1.3 percent of GDP.

The NCPA provides the following citation for this data:

Source: Paul H. Rubin (Emory University and the Cato Institute) and James Cooper, "The High Cost of Lawsuits," Investor's Business Daily, March 4, 1996.

I don't have the time right now (I'm leaving for Louisana at 4pm) but I'd wager that the libertarian Cato Institute has the actual methodology and more detailed data, which admittedly is several years old. I haven't seen anything more current.

Joe:

I've seen data contradicting that, and in the recent gubernatorial election both sides agreed that Texas malpractice lawsuits were contributing to higher health and insurance costs. These are connected, after all - higher premiums are passed onto the patient. Doctors aren't running a charity, and so if their costs increase, they simply charge more. So the "medical services inflation" method of analysis strikes me as a tad misleading.

I find it difficult not to see a link between rising malpractice settlements and rising healthcare costs and insurance premiums. It's counterintuitive, and I while other variables are involved, I don't believe any of them erase the most obvious collelation.

Owen,

It's interesting that you complain that the overview I gave of Liebeck is biased, but the first sources you cite are Robert Bork and the NCPA. The data provided by the NCPA isn't particularly persuasive to me. But at least it's not just carping.

"while nobody has even offered so much as an argument on the point that the US spends a larger percentage of its GDP on torts than any other industrialized nation. If as liberal a civil courts system as we have is necessary to keep corporations in line, then how are other nations getting by with far more a far more restrictive system?"

Well, the rest of the industrialized nations don't necessarily have a tort system, but the state fine companies instead.
In Denmark, a company which did what McDonalds did would get a huge fine, but that wouldn't be considered as tort would it?

Owen, consider yourself fortunate that you live in a country that protects its consumers. Tort reform is simply another way of saying, "take the regulations out of business, because thats good for business," disregarding the right of the consumer to be protected from faulty, dangerous goods. I am sure that at some point in your life you, or someone near and dear to you, has made an error in judgement while using somebodies product. Sellers are accountable, to the same degree that buyers are. IF YOUR DUMB ENOUGH TO SELL COFFEE AT 185 DEGREES, WHICH IS UNFIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION AND CAPABLE OF CAUSING SEVERE BURNS (REQUIRING SKIN GRAFTS TO REPAIR), SHOULD IT BE SPILLED, THEN PAY THE PENALTY FOR IT.

Third degree (or "full thickness") burns are the most serious type of burn and involve permanent tissue destruction. They generally require skin grafts, cause extensive scarring, carry serious risk of infection and death, and can accurately be described as "horrific".

Most people have never even seen a third degree burn, let alone have any idea that regular old restaurant coffee can cause them. I sure didn't until I heard the details of this case, and I'd bet I'm not unusual.

The danger was well out of line with what a reasonable person would expect. McDonald's knew it, and chose to ignore it. They were guilty of negligence.

This case is exactly the way our legal system is supposed to work.

References:

Third Degree Burns
http://www.burnsurvivor.com/burn_types_third.html

"Third-degree burns affect the epidermis, dermis and hypodermis, causing charring of skin or a translucent white color, with coagulated vessels visible just below the skin surface. These burn areas may be numb, but the person may complain of pain. This pain is usually because of second-degree burns. Healing from third-degree burns is very low due the skin tissue and structures being destroyed. Third-degree burns usually result in extensive scarring."

Burn basics
http://www.quickcare.org/skin/burns.html

"The old 'first, second, and third degree' naming system is still common with the public, but doctors now use the terms partial thickness and full thickness to describe burn injuries. Partial thickness burns don’t extend completely through the dermis; full thickness burns do (see diagram to compare classifications). The chart below helps to differentiate burn types. As you can see, partial thickness burns (first degree and second degree) usually heal well and are easier to care for. This is because new skin can grow upward from the dermis; if the dermis is destroyed (full thickness or third degree burn), no skin can grow back in that area and deep scarring develops unless skin grafting is performed."

Products Liability Law Overview
http://www.legalconsumerguide.com/legal_information/general_law/product_liability.html

Frequently Asked Questions about products liability claims
http://www.legalconsumerguide.com/legal_information/general_law/products_liability/faq.html

Kristjan:
1)
Fines which are an instrument of the criminal law, usually require that the tortfeasor had intended that the accident happened. Therefore, a lot of the product liability accidents wouldn't be covered by the system of fines, since they most often are commited negligently.
2)
In the cases where you can give a fine without an intentional breach of legal duty, you still have the fundamental principle of "nulla poene sine lege". That is, you cannot impose a penalty on anyone without having a law defining the illegal conduct (in this case to serve hot coffee, a law which is nonexisting, and which would at most result in a fine of $200 if it was violated, had it existed).
3)
No fines under Danish law come close to the highest awards of punitive damages (unless you enter the EEC antitrust law, which is a completely different matter).

So no, in my opinion it is wrong to assume that the same heavy fines are imposed on tortfeasors under for instance Danish criminal law.

The system of "nulla poene sine lege" is a great safeguard against what happened in the Lieback case. When you impose punitive damages on a defendant, you do it on behalf of the society as a whole. In any civilized society, the least you as an individual can demand, is that you know what the society accepts, and what it doesn't accept. To assume in a legal context, that individuals can mind read what society expects of them is to move one step towards the legal systems of Nazi Germany and the USSR.

We have to bear in mind, that the reason why McDonald's made the coffee this hot, was because there actually was a demand for it. When knife makers make their knives so sharp that you can cut off your fingers, it's not to hurt people, but because the consumers like their knives sharp. Perhaps I could understand the verdict slightly, if the product in question had been a highly sofisticated one, that suddenly exploded, but here we're talking about a person who has probably tried to drink McDonald's coffee before, and who could easily have checked the temperature before placing it in such a high risk position.

Kristjan:
1)
Fines which are an instrument of the criminal law, usually require that the tortfeasor had intended that the accident happened. Therefore, a lot of the product liability accidents wouldn't be covered by the system of fines, since they most often are commited negligently.
2)
In the cases where you can give a fine without an intentional breach of legal duty, you still have the fundamental principle of "nulla poene sine lege". That is, you cannot impose a penalty on anyone without having a law defining the illegal conduct (in this case to serve hot coffee, a law which is nonexisting, and which would at most result in a fine of $200 if it was violated, had it existed).
3)
No fines under Danish law come close to the highest awards of punitive damages (unless you enter the EEC antitrust law, which is a completely different matter).

So no, in my opinion it is wrong to assume that the same heavy fines are imposed on tortfeasors under for instance Danish criminal law.

The system of "nulla poene sine lege" is a great safeguard against what happened in the Lieback case. When you impose punitive damages on a defendant, you do it on behalf of the society as a whole. In any civilized society, the least you as an individual can demand, is that you know what the society accepts, and what it doesn't accept. To assume in a legal context, that individuals can mind read what society expects of them is to move one step towards the legal systems of Nazi Germany and the USSR.

We have to bear in mind, that the reason why McDonald's made the coffee this hot, was because there actually was a demand for it. When knife makers make their knives so sharp that you can cut off your fingers, it's not to hurt people, but because the consumers like their knives sharp. Perhaps I could understand the verdict slightly, if the product in question had been a highly sofisticated one, that suddenly exploded. But here we're talking about a person who has probably tried to drink McDonald's coffee before, and who could easily have checked the temperature before placing it in such a high risk position.

I am writing to complain on the not correct action of towing my car as a customer’s car.

On Saturday Feb. 21 I came to Chicago to meet my wife at the O'Hare airport. We stayed overnight at the Super 8 motel and next day decided to take a tour around downtown. My wife enjoyed Chicago very much because it was her first trip to USA. Then we wanted to try the best and well-known fast food in USA which is McDonalds and we went to get some food at the restaurant located on 600 N. Clark, Chicago. I parked my car on the parking lot by the restaurant and the food was good, then we went for a short walk about 15minutes and on our way back I did not find my car that was stolen or towed I did not know. I was shocked, but then I asked the manager of the restaurant, because he might know and he told me that I could not leave McDonald’s property without his permission so that my car was towed. That was horrible, I always think that McDonalds is the best fast food services ever and their employees value us – customers. I even did not know that McDonalds in Chicago has such an aggressive policy against their customers. Other words I had meal and in addition to the meal I paid $125.00 for parking with McDonalds. That is not fair, that is not correct, that is not for the restaurant that has to be called “the best” Well, I am sending this message to complain and ask to return my money for the action that was not appropriate.

So, I encourage you to make your decision and pay my back $125.000 otherwise I will file my complain with the attorney the general

There was no published opinion in the Liebeck case. However, one might have thought (hoped) that the media would take the minimal effort required to ascertain the actual facts in a case of such pervasive and continuing notoriety and political import as the Liebeck case quickly became and still remains. Yet, with a single exception, no one in the media reported the details of the case until more than six months later, after Public Citizen had held a news conference March 1, 1995 in Washington, D.C., at which Stella Liebeck's son-in-law, Charles Allen, delivered a statement with Stella and other family members present in an attempt to make Congress and the media aware of some of the actual facts in the case. (As part of the final settlement, Stella had had to agree not to make public statements about the case.) The sole exception was the Wall Street Journal, which, approximately two weeks after the verdict was rendered, published an article by Andrea Gerlin that described many of the actual facts in the case. A handful of newspapers reprinted Gerlin's article. The rest of the media continued to refer to the case as before without any mention of the additional facts reported by Gerlin..

Shortly after the Public Citizen news conference, Newsweek published an article which also reported many of the actual facts of the case. As a result of the press conference and the Newsweek article, some editorials and letters appeared which noted that the case was not the horror story it was made out to be. However, the vast majority of references to the case, in the United States and abroad, continued to excoriate it without any mention of the additional facts made available in the press conference or by the two articles. A description of many of the reported facts follows. Unless otherwise noted, the description comes from the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek articles and a published version of Charles Allen's statement at the Public Citizen news conference.

On February 27, 1992, Stella Liebeck, her son Jim and her grandson Chris Tiano left Santa Fe at dawn to drive to the Albuquerque airport to drop off Jim for an early flight. Stella, 79 years old but "quite spry," had just retired from a long career as a department store sales clerk. After leaving the airport, Stella and Chris, who was driving, stopped at a McDonald's drive-up window for breakfast. After they had received their food, Chris pulled over and parked the car so Stella could add some cream and sugar to her coffee. She looked for a place to set the coffee cup down, but there was no cup-holder in the Ford Probe and the dashboard was slanted. Since both hands were needed to remove the lid and add the cream and sugar, she placed the coffee cup between her knees to keep it secure while she removed the lid. While she was attempting to remove the lid, the coffee spilled into her lap.

She screamed as the scalding coffee soaked into and through her sweat suit and scorched her skin. Chris leaped from the car to help. She yanked at her sweat suit and squirmed in the bucket seat, in excruciating pain. Chris raced her to the emergency room, but by the time they arrived severe third-degree burns had spread across her inner thighs, buttocks, groin and labia. Third-degree burns are "full thickness" skin burns that char and blacken the skin and permanently destroy the skin and nerves. Stella remained in the hospital for seven days, went to her daughter's house for three weeks to recuperate, and then returned to the hospital for skin grafts. The grafts were almost as painful as the burns, her daughter said. "She was in tremendous pain; I didn't know if she'd survive this." She had lost 20 pounds, which brought her weight down to only 83 pounds, and was practically immobilized. She was disabled for two years and has permanent scars over 16 percent of her body.

Stella had never initiated a lawsuit and was not looking to initiate one now. However, she and her family thought McDonald's should pay $15,000 to $20,000 to cover her daughter's out-of-pocket expenses (which were about $2000) and wages lost while staying home to take care of her and to reimburse Medicare for over $10,000 of medical expenses. About six months after the accident, Stella's daughter wrote to McDonald's to request reimbursement for these items and to ask that McDonald's lower the temperature of its coffee. Although McDonald's had previously settled many claims by other coffee burn victims for amounts up to and exceeding $500,000, it offered Stella and her family only $800.

While she had been recuperating in her daughter's house, Stella had met a Santa Fe couple who had formerly lived in Texas. The couple knew a Houston attorney, Reed Morgan, who had litigated a coffee-burn lawsuit against McDonald's in 1986 on behalf of a woman in Houston who had also suffered third-degree burns. In that case, Mr. Morgan had had a survey taken of coffee temperatures at 20 McDonald's restaurants and 18 other fast-food restaurants such as Dairy Queen, Dunkin' Donuts and Wendy's. Nine of the 12 highest readings were from McDonald's restaurants. Mr. Morgan also deposed Christopher Appleton, a quality-assurance manager at McDonald's headquarters, who said "he was aware of this risk . . . and had no plans to turn down the heat." McDonald's settled the Texas case for $27,500.

Having had her request for minimal compensation rebuffed by McDonald's, Stella and her family contacted Morgan to have him file a lawsuit against McDonald's for her medical expenses and pain and suffering. Morgan had a survey taken of coffee temperatures at numerous fast-food restaurants around Albuquerque, which indicated that other restaurants all served their coffee at least 20 degrees lower than the approximately 180 degrees at which McDonald's served its coffee. He also obtained McDonald's operating and training manual, which requires its coffee to be brewed at 195 to 205 degrees and held at 180 to 190 degrees for optimal taste.

Morgan offered to settle the case for $300,000, and said later he would have taken half that, but McDonald's did not want to settle. A court-appointed pre-trial mediator, a former judge, recommended that McDonald's settle for $225,000 and said that a jury would be likely to award that amount. McDonald's lawyer did not show up for the mediation, and McDonald's rejected the mediator's recommendation.

Before the trial began, the jurors' thoughts about the case were pretty much the same as those the media and public subsequently had after the verdict became known. The jury foreman, Jerry Goens, said he "wasn't convinced as to why I needed to be there to settle a coffee spill." Juror Roxanne Bell said "I was just insulted. The whole thing sounded ridiculous to me." Juror Betsy Farnham said she also had thought that the suit was frivolous.

But that was before they saw the gruesome photographs of Stella's charred skin, learned of her seven days in the hospital and the subsequent skin grafts, and heard testimony from Dr. Charles Baxter, a renowned burn expert from Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, that coffee at 170 degrees would cause second-degree burns within 3.5 seconds of hitting the skin. Juror Jack Elliott went home and told his wife and daughters "don't drink coffee in the car, at least not hot."

The jury was informed that McDonald's operations and training manual required its coffee to be brewed at 195 to 205 degrees and held at 180 to 190 degrees for optimal taste, and that this was 40 to 50 degrees hotter than coffee made at home. A McDonald's expert argued that any coffee hotter than 130 degrees could produce third-degree burns, so it did not matter that McDonald's coffee was hotter. But a plaintiff's expert testified that lowering the serving temperature to about 160 degrees could make a big difference, because it takes less than three seconds to produce a third-degree burn at 190 degrees, about 12 to 15 seconds at 180 degrees, and about 20 seconds at 160 degrees. According to Stella's son-in-law, McDonald's experts "admitted the[coffee] was too hot for consumption when sold. They did not contest the fact that it took 25 minutes to cool to a drinkable temperature."

Morgan wanted to introduce photographs of the third-degree burns caused by McDonald's coffee that had been suffered by his previous Houston client, as well as photographs of a California woman's second- and third-degree burns that occurred in 1990 when a McDonald's employee spilled hot coffee into her car (the latter case was settled for $230,000). McDonald's lawyer, Tracy McGee, objected: "First-person accounts by sundry women whose nether regions have been scorched by McDonald's coffee might well be worthy of Oprah," she wrote in a motion to the judge, "[b]ut they have no place in a court of law." The judge excluded the photographs and the injured women's testimony, but allowed Morgan to mention the cases.

The jury was further surprised to learn that during the prior ten years McDonald's had received more than 700 reports of coffee burns ranging from mild to third-degree, and had settled burn claims for amounts up to and exceeding $500,000. (Although it is not clear whether it was part of the trial record, the Shriners Burn Institute had complained to the fast-food industry about the serious scalding injuries caused by super-heated coffee.) Christopher Appleton, the McDonald's quality-assurance manager who previously had been deposed in the Texas case, testified that despite the complaints and despite knowing that its coffee was causing serious burns when spilled, McDonald's had not consulted burn experts and had no plans to change any of its coffee policies or procedures. "There are more serious dangers in restaurants," he said. He noted that McDonald's consumer surveys indicated that people like their coffee very hot. He acknowledged that most people would not realize that severe burns were possible with coffee that hot, but stated that McDonald's had decided not to warn its customers about this possibility. (McDonald's had a tiny Caution: Contents Hot label on its cups, which did not impress juror Betty Farnham, who said that she needed her glasses to read it.)

McDonald's safety consultant, Robert Knaff, a human-factors engineer, asserted that 700 complaints, which was about one for every 24 million cups of McDonald's coffee sold, was "basically trivially different from zero." He also misspoke: "It's just that a burn is a very trivial thing - [I mean] a burn is a very terrible thing."

By this time the jurors' views of the case had shifted radically. "Each statistic is somebody badly burned," said juror Betty Farnham. "That [dismissing them as statistically insignificant] really made me angry. There was a person behind every number and I don't think [McDonald's] was attaching enough importance to that." Juror Jack Elliott said he began to realize that the case was about "callous disregard for the safety of the people."

In her closing argument, McGee, the defense lawyer, acknowledged that McDonald's coffee was hot, but argued that was how customers wanted it. She insisted that Stella had only herself to blame. She should not have put the cup between her knees. She should have leapt out of the bucket seat immediately after the spill and removed her clothes. She also argued that the injury was so severe due to Stella's age, since older skin is thinner and thus more vulnerable to injury. "The real question," McGee concluded, ". . . is how far you want our society to go to restrict what most of us enjoy and accept."

The jury took only four hours to reach its verdict. "The facts were so overwhelmingly against the company," said Betty Farnham. "They were not taking care of their consumers." Farnham, who had started the case thinking the suit was frivolous, pushed for a total award of $9.6 million. The jury fixed Stella's actual damages for medical bills and pain and suffering at $200,000, which it reduced to $160,000 after determining that she was contributorily negligent and bore 20% of the overall responsibility for her injury. It also found that McDonald's had engaged in willful, wanton, reckless or malicious conduct, as required for an award of punitive damages. Adopting Morgan's suggestion that punitive damages be assessed equal to one or two days' worth of McDonald's coffee sales, which Morgan estimated to be $1.35 million per day, the jury awarded Stella $2.7 million in punitive damages. "It was our way of saying, 'Hey, open your eyes. People are getting burned'," juror Bell said later.

The trial judge, who, like the Liebecks, was a self-described conservative Republican, agreed with the liability finding, but a month after the verdict he reduced the punitive damages to $480,000 - three times the compensatory damages. He too wanted to let McDonald's know that it "was appropriate to punish and deter" its corporate coffee policy. "This was not a runaway [jury]," he told Newsweek, "I was there." After some additional post-trial maneuvering, the parties settled the case for an undisclosed lesser amount.

HI I NEED A CASE WITH A SIMILAR FACTS OF MACDONALDS BUT IN WHICH A VICTIM WAS A DRIVER

hello. im doing the national history fair day report on mcdonalds and i was wondering if anyone may have any primary resources that they would be so kind to email me...? please