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Weird History Food is taking you back to the 90s for McDonald's Hot Coffee Lawsuit. Over the years, the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit has become heavily associated with the supposed epidemic of frivolous lawsuits in the United States. Most people see the case as the story of a woman who clumsily spilled coffee on her own lap and sued McDonald's in retaliation. However, that is largely untrue and only a fraction of the story.
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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
Accident & Personal Injury Law
Product Liability