Stella Liebeck was a 79-year-old Albuquerque resident when she bought some McDonald’s coffee in 1992. She bought it at a drive-thru, but the car was parked (she was a passenger) when the accident took place. She spilled the entire cup onto her lap. She was hospitalized for 10 days. McDonald’s originally offered her $800 toward her $11,000 medical bills.
This, from a article by Joshua Green at The Washington Monthly, provides some facts to offset the folklore surrounding the infamous McDonald’s coffee lawsuit. It was first posted here four years ago today.
To persuade the public that frivolous personal injury suits have brought on a crisis, advocates of change religiously invoke cases like the elderly woman who spilled coffee on herself and won a $2.9 million jury verdict against McDonald’s. . . . As Roger Williams University torts professor Carl Bogus explains in his book, Why Lawsuits Are Good for America, the woman who spilled her McDonald’s coffee had to undergo a skin graft, spend weeks in the hospital, and offered to settle for $10,000 (McDonald’s refused). She only sued as a last resort—the epitome of conscientious use of the legal system. Her original award of $2.9 million was later reduced by a judge, as most such judgements are, to $480,000, and she wound up settling for even less. To prevent other suits, McDonald’s, which had previously ignored more than 700 similar complaints, stopped serving near-boiling coffee, as did its competitors.