Risk Management 2301
Stella Liebeck VS McDonalds

This case involves two parties; McDonalds and Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old female, was sitting in the passenger seat of her grandson’s car having just purchased a cup of McDonald’s coffee. After her grandson stopped the car, she tried to hold the cup securely between her knees while removing the lid. However, the cup tipped over, spilling boiling hot coffee onto her legs. She received third-degree burns on over 16 percent of her body, this required eight days of hospital care, whirlpool treatment for debridement of her wounds, skin grafting, scarring, and disability for more than two years.
Despite these horrifically extensive injuries, she asked McDonald’s to settle her hospital bills of $20,000. However, McDonald’s refused to settle, they offered her a mere fraction of the required $20,000. McDonalds offered $800. The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages, which was reduced to $160,000 because the jury found Liebeck to be twenty percent at fault and $2.7 million in punitive damages for McDonald’s callous conduct. (The judge was referring to the fact that; McDonald's revenue from coffee sales is in excess of $1.3 million a day.) The trial judge reduced the punitive damages to $480,000. Subsequently, the parties entered a post-verdict settlement.
The case went on to be considered a frivolous lawsuit, which means the practice of starting or carrying on lawsuits that, due to their lack of legal merit, have little to no chance of being won. In addition, this is the reason that the case received so much attention, it was a prime example of how people exploit Americas legal system. The attention was gained through disbelief and the first ridiculous case of its kind. As a result of this case many changes took place on the behalf of McDonalds to ensure such a “frivolous case” never took place again regarding the temperature of their coffee. For example, they did not warn customers of the heat of their coffee, admitting that the coffee they served was not “fit for consumption” and, furthermore that they had known about the scalding issue for more than 10 years. McDonalds labeled temperature warnings on cups, reduced the serving temperature from 180-190 degrees Fahrenheit to 158. This increases the time taken for a third degree burn to affect the skin from, 2-7 seconds to around 60 seconds. Stella Liebecks attorney mentioned all of the points above in court, during the trial. After reading over the case and its facts, I was baffled that the U.S legal system would order McDonalds to pay out so much money in compensation, for such a lawsuit as spilling coffee on your own lap. It seem preposterous to me that Stella Liebeck was unaware of the cups content before spilling it on herself, she obviously knew it would be hot as does every customer buying coffee in America, unless you ask for an iced coffee. It seems to me that Stella Liebeck used her own misfortune of spilling the cup to her advantage by suing McDonalds, how can her act of spilling the cup on herself be McDonalds fault. That would be like the cup blowing out of the window and hitting someone in the eye and McDonalds being sued. I personally don’t feel that it was right to favor Liebeck. However, we live in such a world where everything has to be notified, labeled and made extensively obvious to the consumer because if not, what I believe to be a soft case such as this will occur. Although, I do feel for Stella Liebecks traumatizing injuries, she should have taken more care and attention when opening the lid to the cup.