The Most Popular Personal Injury Law Story Of All Time

By Author: Shiela Byron
Total Articles: 29
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Can you guess what the most famous personal injury account of all time is? In case you don’t know, what cave or rock were you hiding under? But seriously, the case was so famous it created landmark variations towards the way we treat coffees purchased from coffee shops, bookstores and shops, not to mention personal injuries as a whole.

Slipped your thoughts at this time? It’s the coffee case brought against McDonald’s by a grandmother from Albuquerque and actually won the case. Called Hot Coffee, which was made into a documentary in 2011 and aired on HBO, it’s the reason why you are able to see so many cautions on the coffee plastic lid on how very hot it really is.

Story

In February 1992 Stella Liebeck purchased coffee from a McDonald’s drive-through. With her grandson who was driving the car, they parked so she could put cream and sugar into her coffee. Placing the cup in between her knees, she was pulling the lid when the coffee poured all over her lower limbs.

She was raced towards the hospital encountering third degree burns. She was confined in the hospital for 8 days and went through ...
... skin grafting and two years of medical follow-up ensued.

She asked for a settlement from the fast-food chain to compensate for the medical expenses which came to $10,500 but was only offered $800. Liebeck then employed the Texan lawyer Reed Morgan who filed a suit against McDonald’s for gross negligence, citing that the coffee was “unreasonably dangerous” and “defectively manufactured”.

When McDonald’s declined to settle with $9,000, the case went to court. One of the highlights of the case was how the McDonald’s coffee, at 82 degrees Celsius, higher than most store bought coffees, has the capacity to result in third degree burns. It was also discovered that a lot more than 700 McDonald’s customers had been burnt by this java.

The restaurant’s qc supervisor argued that just about any food that’s hotter than 54 degrees C has the capability to burn. This brought Liebeck’s team to debate that it was an acknowledgment that the coffee can burn the mouth and throat when sipped instantly.

The jury declared that McDonald’s was 80% responsible with Liebeck 20% guilty. The jury found that the cautions on the coffee cups are not sufficient nor are they apparent enough to be seen. They required the fast-food chain to pay Liebeck $160,000 for compensatory damage and 2.7 million dollars for punitive damages.

Public Response

The case, when it got into general public light, attracted lots of fangs. It was called by a lot of people as frivolous litigation, which formally is a legal action that has no chance of succeeding. ABC News termed the case as “the poster child of excessive lawsuits.” The case was called emblematic of America’s obsession with suing anything worth suing.

Others, on the other hand, claimed it absolutely was a “meaningful and worthy lawsuit”. Many people sympathized with Liebeck and what she had to endure with all the burns she developed. After the incident, her life has never been the same.

Changes

Main coffee vendors were likewise affected by the situation, as third degree burn legal cases were submitted versus them. So much myths and misconceptions surrounded the episode specifically that Liebeck was driving.

Nevertheless the biggest change of all was it made food establishments more careful in their actions. Whether you believe the end result of the case or otherwise, there’s no doubt this is the most widely used case of contemporary history.

Arizona Personal Injury Lawyers from Johnson Law Group serves the Arizona state with the Best Arizona Personal Injury Law and Medical Malpractice law.