We all know about the ridiculous McDonald’s coffee case of 79-year-old Stella Liebeck, who was adding cream and sugar to a 49-cent cup of McDonald’s coffee she’d bought at the drive-through.
Holding the cup between her knees in a parked car, she spilt the entire cup in her lap. With her cotton sweat pants absorbing and holding the hot liquid to her skin, she sat in the puddle for more than a minute before her grandson, who had been in the driver’s seat, rescued her.
Liebeck suffered third-degree burns. An unfortunate accident turned into a notorious example of the problems with a civil justice system run amok when Liebeck sued McDonald’s, blaming it for selling her hot coffee, and a jury awarded punitive damages of $2.7 million. Yes, the cup had warnings, but they could have been better warnings.
Surely, civil justice reform’s opponents could have made a colorable argument against the use of the case as a symbol. The result was an outlier. Nearly every single court to consider hot coffee spills before and after the Liebeck case has held that, as a matter of law, it is the person who spilled the coffee, rather than the maker of the coffee, who is legally responsible for any injury. As a British court (as well as Elaine in “Seinfeld’s” satirical take on the case) noted, coffee is supposed to be hot, so no duty is breached by selling it as so.
Yet, amazingly, the trial bar has chosen this case to make a stand. For more than a decade, it has been releasing “fact sheets” that actually claim the result in the Liebeck case is aspirational, rather than a betrayal of justice.
To get to that point, they have to shade some facts. So in this fictional world, McDonald’s coffee, at 180 degrees, is hotter than any other on the market — as if no one could take a thermometer to a cup of Starbucks for the refutation.
Sure enough, trial lawyers have sued Starbucks, Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts and just about every other major vendor of hot coffee over burns. Anything more than 140 degrees is capable of quickly causing burns — and indeed, the trial bar doesn’t tell you that Liebeck’s lawyer thinks that drinks above 140 degrees are all “unreasonably dangerous.”
Sometimes, the trial lawyers resort to pointing out that Liebeck was hospitalized and offered to settle the case relatively cheaply — which doesn’t change the fact that her injuries were her own fault. Or they note that there were 700 complaints about the temperature of the coffee — out of billions of cups sold.
Certainly some urban legends have grown around the case: One variant has Liebeck driving the car. But plaintiffs’ lawyers are combating these urban legends with factually false statements of their own.
And these new urban legends have been adopted wholesale by many law professors and by left-wing supporters of the trial bar. The latest iteration is a documentary called “Hot Coffee”; statements by the makers show that they are buying (or at least are willing to sell) the trial bar’s story hook, line and sinker.
Nobody forces anyone to drink McDonald’s coffee. To compete in the marketplace, McDonald’s must offer a beverage at a price and quality — and temperature — that consumers want. Liebeck asked for punitive damages equal to two days’ worth of coffee sales.
The trial lawyers’ defense of the case makes it clear: They think businesses should be punished for success in the market. In today’s economy, such targeting of deep pockets is no longer a luxury we can afford.
Theodore H. Frank is president of the Center for Class Action Fairness.
