Coffee and the Mega-Corp

So someone on one of my mailing lists recently lamented the boneheaded state of our judicial system and used, as so often happens, the case where a woman sued McDonald’s because she spilled hot coffee on herself—and an idiotic jury found in her favor.

This case is famous and is now, in fact, shorthand for how awful the state of our overly litigious society has become. The facts of the case, however, are far different from popular perception. A recap can be found here.

A couple things to note:

• The car was parked when the woman spilled the coffee on herself; it's often erroneously reported that she was driving at the time. She wasn’t, she was in the passenger’s seat and was simply trying to take the lid off to add cream and sugar when it spilled—as could easily happen to anyone.

• The ER doctor who treated the woman was stunned by the extent of her burns—her sweat pants had actually fused to her genitals from the intense heat of the coffee. She ended up hospitalized for over a week and required skin grafts as well as continued treament for the next two years.

• The woman tried to settle with McDonald's—all she wanted initially was for McDonald's to pay for her hospital bills. But McDonald’s was the one who insisted the case go to trial.

• They discovered that McDonald's knew their coffee wasn't just hot—it was dangerously hot, as doctors testified it was literally impossible to drink it as served without doing damage to one's mouth; coffee at home is usually less than 140 degrees, whereas McDonald's is served as high as 190. Moreover, McDonald's had already had 700 complaints about the unusually high heat of their coffee at the time of the woman's accident. McDonald's own quality control manager testified that this number of injuries was insufficient to cause the company to evaluate its practices and conceded that McDonald's coffee would burn the mouth and throat if consumed when served

• The jury came up with the number they did—$2.7 million—by fining the company the amount of money they earn in two days' of coffee sales; it really doesn't sound exactly crippling when put that way, especially given what a low percentage of the corporation's sales are from coffee.

Of course, in the end, the actual number was reduced to $480,000.

Given the size of the corporation involved and how it has refused to alter its stance even when people were being injured—a practice the judge who reduced the verdict called callous and reckless—that actually sounds pretty unfair to me; I don't know what price most people would consider fair compensation for a burned labia, but I'm guessing it'd be considerably higher if you knew the person in question.

McDonald’s served a product which is inherently defective—its coffee cannot be consumed without damaging human tissue. To blame the victim in this case is as absurd as blaming the victims of Firestone’s defective tires. And the situation is similar in another way: in both cases, the manufacturor’s knew about the problem but decided it would be cheaper to ignore it and settle than actually fix it and save people pain or even death.

McDonald’s defense of its dangerously hot coffee? Their researach showed that their customers “like their coffee hot.” What constitutes “hot?” Their research didn’t show that. In other words, they never bothered to determine if, say, 170 degrees was still “hot” as far as their customers were concerned. Or maybe 160 is “hot,” or 155 degrees. Who can say? Not McDonald’s. They never bothered. And it’s that sort of negligence and arrogance that lead the jury to find in favor of the grandmother with the melted labia.

And, you know, I don’t understand why so many people hate our legal system so much. Seems to me the whole “trial by a jury of ones’s peers” thing has, by and large, with some admittedly egregious exceptions, worked pretty well for a couple centuries now.

Like so many other situations, folks just hate lawyers and juries…until they need one to go to bat for them. Then all their previous arguments, built up over years of simply outrageous decisions, go right out the damn window.

Comments

[fish]

Like so many other situations, folks just hate lawyers and juries…until they need one to go to bat for them.

You mean like when tort reform soldier Rick Santorum tells doctors he will fight to put a cap on damages 6 years after he sues his wife's chiropractor for 2X his propsed cap on damages? (note: I am not arguing that a chiropractor is a doctor)

[shannon]

It's cool to hate lawyers and think juries are stupid. When the public hears about a multi-million dollar verdict about some type of corporate harm, they usually say, "That person isn't entitled to x amount." What they fail to understand is that point of punitive damages is not to make the person whole (that's what compensatory damages do), but to PUNISH the person and/or company who did the wrong. As far as I'm concerned, $2.7 millions dollars wasn't near enough for that poor woman.

[xixi]

by the title of this post on my feed I thought it was going to be about the gingerbread latte at starbucks and a link to the way you can make the same thing at home (using, you know, GOOD coffee)

but no. Instead, this was about melted labia.

[scott]

by the title of this post on my feed I thought it was going to be about the gingerbread latte at starbucks...instead, this was about melted labia.

Always the same ol’ story—if it’s not one, it’s the other...