What a lot of people get wrong about the infamous 1994 McDonald’s hot coffee lawsuit

[natyanayaki]

Adam Ruins Everything explains that the case wasn’t about greed, but about a working-class woman forcing a big company to make its product safer.

It's treated as a classic example of judicial overreach and greed: A woman, driving in her car while holding McDonald's coffee between her legs, spills some of the coffee on herself. Inflicted with some

Comments

[backincharge]

mess, I have a personal connection to this lawsuit.

In my 10th grade AP English class we were talking about frivolous lawsuits and had to do a report on a given lawsuit. I was given this one, researched it, wrote about why it wasn't actually frivolous, and got an F for it. lmao

I'll never forget it.

[natyanayaki]

all offense intended (to your teacher), but your teacher should get an f in teaching.

[lightframes]

Wear that F with pride

[ioplokon]

ugh, what an awful teacher. good for hs you though, for actually taking the time to inform yourself on the topic! (even at a university level, i read waaaay too many essays that are just recycling popular rhetoric on a subject by rote - and now i see why, since clearly that's what your teach wanted you to do.)

[scolaro]

I'd never heard that version before. Thanks for sharing!

[thepikey]

Shannon Wheeler has a pretty good (detailed!) comic about it too.

http://www.tmcm.com/tmcm/mcdonalds-coffee-lawsuit/

[ioplokon]

Defending Liebeck is a hill I will die on. I feel so bad for her & for how her story's been distorted. It really hits me hard how so many US lawsuits happen only to cover medical bills, and how few and ineffective our consumer protections are.

I also get so annoyed about how people in other countries bring up this lawsuit to show how stupid americans are (when I was living abroad people brought it up all the fucking time). I guess people here & abroad like to think they're too smart to be fucked over by corporate negligence, but it's still irritating.

[natyanayaki]

what really gets to me about this case in particular is that i've found so many people who are generally quick to criticize corporations still make comments against liebeck. she has been turned into a meme and not only is that tragic but that's shameful.

people who ridicule her should be ashamed.

[meadowphoenix]

This case was always why I laugh a little when we hear of lawsuit judgments in the millions, because I know the appeals court is going to reduce the judgment to peanuts and rarely anyone gets punitive damages.

[skittish_derby]

I had to bring this up in my discussion with my MIL last summer. MIL tried to frame it the way this case always gets framed, that she was just after the money. And Leibeck didn't even end up with that much money at all.

I get the impression from interviews I watched in that documentary I mentioned up-thread that she didn't even want the money really. She just didn't want anyone to get burned again, which is exactly the result she got. Which is exactly what these sorts of cases are supposed to do-- keep companies accountable when they hurt people.