I remembered the 2.7 Million originally awarded, which seemed excessive to me. My not infallible memory apparently had other errors.
Mea Culpa for the memory errors.
The jury awarded her $2.7, because of how McDonald's acted and responded to her, because this was an issue had had been raised more than 10 years prior to that. They had received over 700 complaints and claims for compensation for burns for their coffee, some just as severe as hers. So they knew it was a problem. The amount the jury awarded was basically a percentage of one day's income for the company itself. That was knocked down quite substantially in court. They eventually settled out of court for a much lesser amount. She had initially requested funds for her medical bills and care, as she needed fairly extensive skin grafts and many surgeries and burns care, which is frankly awful and traumatic and McDonald's, knowing their coffee could cause 3rd degree burns, refused to pay.
It absolutely kills me that people keep referring to this case as a frivolous lawsuit. It is so far from the truth.
Mrs Liebeck was not a wealthy woman, who suffered horrific burns, required multiple surgeries and burns treatment because McDonald's coffee was being sold at boiling point. She had initially asked for $20,000 from McDonald's to cover the cost of her injuries. McDonald's only offered her $800. That is when she sued them. It was never about the money, but really about trying to force McDonald's to change the temperature of their coffee to prevent further injuries.
This is a huge company, with a bevy of corporate lawyers, who literally went on a public relations campaign, painting her lawsuit as frivolous and questioning her reasoning because 'hey, everyone knows coffee is hot, right?'.. The reality was that their coffee went beyond just being hot. It caused full thickness burns. I have seen the photos of her burns in law school. And they went to through to the bone. As I said, if you want an indication just how burnt she was, boil water up to the point where it is actually boiling and pour the volume of a cup of that boiling water into your lap. Her injuries were severe and extreme.
McDonald's had been aware that their coffee could cause 3rd degree full thickness burns, in just a couple of seconds on contact with skin, for over a decade and still demanded that their restaurants hold their coffee at that temperature and their warnings were not even sufficient to convey the risk to customers. Even their own staff advised that their coffee was not consumable, because of how dangerous it was. They even tried to argue that people who bought their drive-thru coffee would not drink it right away, and would usually wait until they arrived at home or work before drinking it. This is what they argued in court. But discovery showed that they had been aware and their own internal survey's showed that people who purchased their coffee drank it straight away.
When Liebeck brought her case against McDonald's, their corporate lawyers literally tried to smear her as money hungry, abusing the tort system with a frivolous case, and the media and people bought into it, thinking 'duh, coffee is hot, it's her own fault'.. that this was as frivolous as it got. This poor woman lived with being abused for that for 10 years, before she died. There was a documentary about her case, several years ago, and it was only then, that people actually started to realise just how bad her injuries were, and how much she suffered and how fucking awful McDonald's were about it. But the myth of that being a frivolous lawsuit lives on. And it is exceptionally far from frivolous.
Tort law reform does need to happen. But Mrs Liebeck's case is not and should never be an example of a frivolous lawsuit. When a huge corporation knows their product is that dangerous and keeps selling it for over a decade, despite numerous reports of severe burns from its customers, then they should be made to pay for the injuries they cause. I liken it to car companies that sell cars with defective breaks, knowing that they are defective, but figure that the number of cars sold compared to reports of defective breaks, made it worthwhile to do nothing about it. That is essentially what McDonald's did. Their own quality assurance managers and others within the company had advised the coffee was not fit for consumption. They chose to ignore it and the many reports of severe burns from customers, because 'hey, the coffee is selling well!', so it was worthwhile to them to do nothing about lowering the temperature of their coffee or warning their customers of the risk of their product.
It wasn't a memory error, Dinosaur. You simply bought the myths that McDonald's lawyers spread about the case being frivolous. I'll put it this way, I could not even post the images of the burns she suffered on this site, because they were that severe and distressing to look at.
In the interest of picking nits, this particular bit didn't jive with my memory. The mean temperature of McDonald's coffee isn't all that different from other establishments - in fact, it is sometimes lower:
This study was conducted several years after her case went to court, and all temperatures of hot coffee in that study was much lower than the 180 to 190 degrees fahrenheit McDonald's used to sell their coffee prior to and up to Liebeck's case.
Mrs Liebeck suffered her injuries in 1992. McDonald's had been fielding complaints and reports of burns from their coffee since the early 80's. The graph you posted is from 1997 and 2002, several years after Liebeck's lawsuit. They did bring the temperature of their coffee down quite substantially
after that lawsuit in most of their outlets.
Some in the late 90's still kept their coffee at 180F.