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Today, we're going to take a look at the notorious McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit of the 1990s
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On February 27, 1992, 79-year-old Stella Mae Leibach ordered a coffee at the drive-thru
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window of a McDonald's in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The car had no cup holders, so Leibach
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held the coffee between her legs while she tried to add cream and sugar to it. Unfortunately
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when she tried to remove the lid, she spilled the coffee all over her lap. She sued McDonald's
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and offered to settle the case for $20,000. To many at the time
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it sounded like a frivolous attempt to score some dough. Rather than cut Lyback a check for 20 grand
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they instead offered her a one-time payment of $800. Now, you might be wondering
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if the case was so ridiculous, why did McDonald's pay her anything? So the reason McDonald's made Lyback a counteroffer
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is because the case was a lot more serious than it seemed, but as you're about to hear
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$800 wasn't going to cut it. You see, when Lyback spilled that coffee on her lap
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She was wearing highly absorbent sweatpants, which soaked up the hot liquid and spread it all over her thighs, buttocks, and her groin
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She incurred third-degree burns over 6% of her body, and it sent her into a state of medical shock
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She was quickly taken to a hospital where she would undergo a painful eight-day course of skin graft treatments
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But despite this care, she was permanently scarred and even partially disabled for years after the incident
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You probably heard those details and wondered what the hell McDonald's puts in their coffee
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Well in the course of the subsequent lawsuit Lybeck attorneys discovered that McDonald coffee was kept between 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit as a matter of company policy
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Tests even showed that when kept this hot, coffee could cause third-degree burns in just three to seven seconds
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Despite the strong evidence that McDonald's was at fault, or at the very least being reckless and shady like the bad guys in Good Burger
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the public tended to see the lawsuit as frivolous. And part of the reason for that was the perception that Leibach had caused her own injuries
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by driving while drinking coffee, but this was not the case. Leibach was actually a passenger in the car
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which was being driven by her grandson when the injury occurred. What's more, the car wasn't even moving
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Her grandson had parked so she could add cream and sugar before she accidentally spilled the coffee
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During the trial, some other disturbing facts came out regarding McDonald's coffee
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For example, it was revealed that from 1982 to 1992, McDonald's received over 700 complaints about their coffee's temperature
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And it wasn't just a case of 700 people saying they thought the copy was too hot
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These complaints were all related to intense burns, often burns similar to the ones Liebeck
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sustained. The jury reached a verdict in Liebeck's favor and awarded her an astronomical $2.7 million
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in punitive damages. But that amount of the punitive damages, they declared, was quickly
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reduced by the judge to a far more down-to-earth-sounding $480,000. Witnesses from the
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McDonald's Corporation admitted they had known the risks surrounding the coffee's temperature
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for over 10 years and that consumers were not adequately informed. Thanks, Ronald
