July 18, 2011

• Burn, Burn, Yes Ya Gonna Burn

  I recently watched a documentary on HBO called Hot Coffee. The movie was basically about lawsuits and how sometimes, they are needed and yet sometimes, the people doing the suing are viewed as villains. While they go into several different lawsuits, the one that the movie is based on is the most infamous one. I’m sure many of you remember the overview of the case that the movie primarily deals with: the old lady who spilled McDonald’s coffee on herself. Everybody knows about this case; in fact, you could make an argument that this was the most famous lawsuit ever and maybe even one of the most influential cases ever.

  Of course everybody has their opinion, however most people believe the case was bullshit and frivolous. Although that was generally my opinion on it, I also was not very opinionated on it unlike most other things. I thought that maybe the lady had a little bit of a case, but I certainly could not understand how she got something like two million dollars from the case. I remember hearing years ago that the lady originally wanted to settle for about $900 which was the cost of her medical care but McDonald’s said no. Turns out I was kind of wrong on that point. She wanted to settle for the cost of her medical care which totaled about $10,000 and McDonald’s would only pay $900.

  But perhaps you all have your own opinions and misconceptions about the case. Allow me to point a few things out and you tell me what you thought was true or if the lady had a case. First of all, most people think she was driving down the road with the coffee in between her legs and spilled it on herself. Turns out, she wasn’t even driving. And the car wasn’t even moving. She was in the passenger’s seat while her relative was behind the wheel. He parked the car and they sorted through the order. This is when she spilled the coffee.

  McDonald’s always had a policy of keeping their sitting coffee between 180 and 190 degrees. Even a McDonald’s VP stated that nobody would want to consume something that hot if they did not want to get burned. He said this in a video that was played at the trial. Prior to this case, McDonald’s had received over 700 complaints about burns and the coffee being too hot. Yet, they never did anything.

  All of that was an eye opener for me. But,the most damning evidence for me though was the pictures of the burns on her legs and inner thighs. I wish I had a copy of the pictures to post because they are shocking. Quite honestly, once you see them, it would certainly make you think about, if nothing else, that the coffee was indeed too hot. The debate though is the accountability factor; critics say how could you reward somebody for being an idiot and spilling coffee on themselves. While that might be true, the liberal in me says that McDonald’s shares in the accountability for knowing there was a significant problem but not doing anything to correct it.

  Like all documentaries, this one does of course, have a bias and in the case of this movie, a liberal bias. But if you get a chance, you should check it out for several reasons, among them to learn that companies have found a way to prevent employees and customers from suing no matter what the situation. I now open this up for debate.

  • 10:26 pm
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