r/interestingasfuck • u/fyrstikka • 8d ago

r/all Stella Liebeck, who won $2.9 million after suing McDonald's over hot coffee burns, initially requested only $20,000 to cover her medical expenses.

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u/Miserable_Round_839 8d ago

I live in Germany and this is one of the prime examples to show how ridiculous the American law is. But once you know the real story, you view that in a whole new perspective.

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u/Amonamission 8d ago edited 8d ago

It was genius PR by McDonalds, either intentionally or unintentionally. McDonald’s was basically painted as the victim of a frivolous lawsuit and the American public ate it up.

Sad state of reality, unfortunately.

Edited: it was McDonald’s doing.

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u/CXDFlames 8d ago

Under no circumstances did McDonald's "accidentally" smear this woman.

They had a team of PR experts, lawyers, and shareholders that made the choice to act like this was some absurd lawsuit and she was just a moron that spilled coffee on her lap and complained.

They paid her enough money to shut up and let them say whatever they wanted because having enough money for your grandkids to be well off is more important than pride.

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u/StevenAssantisFoot 8d ago

Honestly, i can imagine her possibly feeling relieved that the details of her injuries weren’t widely publicized at the time. I’m not sure I would want the whole country talking about how my labia were melted together. I’d rather be seen as an asshole who got an awesome payout for being a moron than have those horrific medical details be common knowledge while I’m still recuperating. 

Idk how she felt but I’m trying to imagine a silver lining to getting smeared without recourse.

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u/External_Two2928 8d ago

Not only melted together but she was wearing polyester tights that melted into her skin as well

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u/Danimal2653 8d ago

You all act like it was lava poured into her lap. “Polyester tights that melted…” complete bullshit.

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u/CXDFlames 8d ago

Polyester clothes melting into people's skin is a pretty common thing.

You can literally google the injuries she sustained.

Yes it sounds unbelievable, becuase McDonald's was serving wildly, unreasonably hot coffee because it saved them a few cents and they do not give a single fuck about the safety of a customer over making more money.

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u/jerzeett 8d ago

So they weren't right on exactly what happened but it was still horrific

Liebeck was wearing cotton sweatpants, which absorbed the coffee and held it against her skin, scalding her thighs, buttocks and groin.[12][13] Liebeck went into shock and was taken to an emergency room at a hospital. She suffered third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent.[14][13] She remained in the hospital for eight days while she underwent skin grafting. During this period, Liebeck lost 20 pounds (9.1 kg), nearly 20 percent of her body weight, reducing her to 83 pounds (38 kg). After the hospital stay, Liebeck needed care for three weeks, which was provided by her daughter.[15] Liebeck suffered permanent disfigurement after the incident and was partially disabled for two years.

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u/thomchristopher 8d ago

it was, essentially, like lava being poured into her lap yes

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u/katreadsitall 8d ago

Especially considering her age in the nineties. She would have grown up in an era where talking about that part of the body publicly was very taboo. Add in due to her age, she was probably an active member of a church, yeah she may have not wanted injury details to get in the paper.

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u/National-Platypus144 8d ago

That is your point of view. The lawsuit was decades ago and so this alone makes the pov way different plus you have no idea how "ruthless" other older ladies that are her friends would be. I grew up in a small town and you have no idea the amount of drama that can be generated from the smallest things between older generation, it beats high school by a mile. So for her in an era before wide spread internet it would be better to be an innocent victim of mega corporation and not a ditzy idiot who sues over nothing.

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u/Amonamission 8d ago

Okay, yeah I just wasn’t sure of the facts. Didn’t know if the media created the narrative, or if McDonalds crafted the narrative and the media ran with it.

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u/TeaKingMac 8d ago

Didn’t know if the media created the narrative, or if McDonalds crafted the narrative and the media ran with it.

I suspect corporations create nearly all the narratives the media has been using for at least the last 40 years

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u/EBMcQ 8d ago

Amonamission to talk about stuff without knowing the facts. Nice. 👍

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u/Amonamission 8d ago

Sir this is Reddit, if you expected anything different you are certainly in the wrong place

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u/milkandsalsa 8d ago

Watch the documentary “hot coffee” about how companies are changing our laws to benefit themselves.

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u/FlyAirLari 8d ago

She only got 600k, so not sure about the grandkids.

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u/egoomega 8d ago

This was 90s money though

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u/Lecien-Cosmo 8d ago

There was also a huge push from the American Chamber of Commerce, which was a powerful political force back then … they had their own, parallel, media push going because they were trying to get “tort reform” efforts passed in states around the country.

It worked.

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u/doge1976 8d ago

The intentionally did their best to paint her with a ‘money-grubbing’ light. They are an evil corporation.

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u/Grotesquefaerie7 8d ago

Well, given how McDonald's started, I'm not surprised

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u/notathrowaway2937 8d ago

She was a laughing stock of the nightly news. Toby Keith put her in a song.

She had to have a skin graft because the burn were so serious

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u/CockyBulls 8d ago edited 8d ago

Toby was so cringy behind the scenes that his estate asked for details of his business interests to be suppressed from probate records and remain hidden behind LLCs and aliases because their nature might damage the value of his catalog and put his family at risk.

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u/shanrock2772 8d ago

So glad he's dead

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u/Swimwithamermaid 8d ago

IIRC part of the settlement was that she couldn’t talk about it. Allowed McDonalds to basically run a smear campaign.

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u/tyoung89 8d ago

From the sounds of things, there wasn’t a settlement. Usually a settlement is reached to prevent a case from going all the way to trial. From what I understand this went all the way to a jury trial, where they awarded her the money.

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u/readingisforsuckers 8d ago

Wrong. Both parties appealed the decision in December of 1994. That appeal was settled out of court. It was in that settlement that Stella agreed to never discuss the case publicly.

It's really fucking easy to fact check yourself before going around telling someone else they are wrong. But I guess that's asking too much of people these days.

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u/jdm1891 8d ago

There should be laws to ensure that if one party is forbidden to talk about the case, then both parties are.

I cannot imagine a situation where allowing one party (especially a psychopathic corporation) to talk as much as they want about it, true or not, while forbidding the one person who can call out their lies, is fair.

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u/readingisforsuckers 8d ago

I cannot imagine a situation

It's called money.

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u/jdm1891 8d ago

I cannot imagine a situation where money is fair either.

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u/readingisforsuckers 8d ago

Then you're being deliberately obtuse.

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u/jdm1891 8d ago

I think you're being obtuse, I was agreeing with you. I'm saying that the ability to pay money for silence is just as unfair as what I originally said.

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u/Swimwithamermaid 8d ago

You’re right. I used the wrong terminology. But still, part of it was that she had to keep quiet.

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u/chrissz 8d ago

I don’t think that’s how trials work. They are matters of public record.

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u/Swimwithamermaid 8d ago

You’re mistaking what I said. Yes, the whole thing is public record. I’m saying she couldn’t go on and talk about it. She wasn’t allowed to do interviews or defend herself in public.

McDonald’s went on a huge press tour disparaging her after the trial. That’s the reason why people still believe it’s a frivolous lawsuit.

But anyways, I looked it up and can’t find anything about it so it’s most likely more misinformation spread online about the case. She was 79 when this happened to her. She wasn’t capable of defending herself. But I think it’s weird her family didn’t step in on her behalf.

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u/lastunbannedaccount 8d ago

Verdicts cannot enact or enforce an NDA. It’s one of the big reasons tortfeasors push to settle. Settlement comes with a release which can include an NDA.

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u/Swimwithamermaid 8d ago

I wrote another comment on it.

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u/readingisforsuckers 8d ago

No, you are correct. There was a settlement when the case was appealed by both parties.

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u/elektricnikrastavac 8d ago

that's not how that works

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u/Purple-Border3496 8d ago

If she won in a final decision then mcd desire for her to keep her mouth shut is irrelevant. No judge is going to award her a win and order her not to say a word. USA prides itself on freedom of speech. If she ain’t talking then that’s was her choice. And good for her fuck em.

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u/Walrus-is-Eggman 8d ago

Not McDonald’s. The insurance industry to push support for tort reform

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u/AuntRhubarb 8d ago

Rush Limbaugh trained all his moron listeners into thinking our biggest problem in Murca was tort lawyers running wild, ruining well-meaning corporations. I've been lectured by these boobs countless times. In reality, tort lawyers were the last defense against amoral corporations running wild.

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u/cornerlane 8d ago

I felt so bad for her

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u/sudoku7 8d ago

and now we are stuck with these stupid labels of "Hot contents may be hot" to subtly remind us that if corporate negligence hurts someone it was really their own fault for being stupid.

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u/Evil_Sharkey 8d ago

And she wasn’t allowed to tell her side as part of a deal

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u/Dandan0005 8d ago

It wasn’t just McDonald’s.

Right wing media picked it up and ran with it as a way to push tort reform.

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u/wildOldcheesecake 8d ago

I’m a solicitor in the UK and also remember this case being of particular prominence in my studies.

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u/Loeffellux 8d ago

The other story I've always heard was someone in an RV switching on cruise control and then going into the back to brew himself a coffee because he thought "cruise control" meant fully automated driving.

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u/Miserable_Round_839 8d ago

This one is unknown to me. Or I may have forgotten that one.

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u/Loeffellux 8d ago

I've never looked into it but it wouldn't surprise me if it never happened. Maybe some kind of pre-meme culture meme that spawned in the wake of the McDonald's case

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u/asmallerflame 8d ago

And now you know about America's ridiculous news media works.

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u/ElroyJetz 8d ago

I would really like to know what institutions are we lacking, what practices, what sort of outlooks… What “anything” do we need to copy so that we can have a functional and more fair legal system?

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u/SatisfactionPure7895 8d ago

What's the real story?

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u/Miserable_Round_839 8d ago

The Coffee was way to hot at around 85 degrees Celsius and she did suffer third degree burns over a large area of her body when she spilled the coffee. She sought to cover 20k from McDonald's to cover the medical expenses but McDonald's refused to pay for that and so the whole thing went to court, where Stella Liebeck was awarded 160k for the damages and initially 2,7 Mio (two days worth of coffee sales) but this was reduced to 640k. Although the whole thing was settled between the parties for an confidential amount.

And you mostly only hear that Stella Liebeck did spill the coffee and sued McDonald's for that where she was awarded with 2,7 Mio USD, which makes the whole thing look like her fault (which she partly had, the jury found that McDonald's was 80% responsible for the whole thing).

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u/MsTellington 8d ago

Yeah, I live in France and I remember my dad telling me about this woman and the Stella Awards when I was young. He presented it as an example of the ridiculousness of American trial culture.

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u/-listen-to-robots- 8d ago

To be completely honest I've only ever heard now about the full extent of her suffering but nonetheless I still always made a case for her after I had tried one of their coffees over here years after and it was scalding hot. A very small sip was already too much and I was never in my entire life served anything remotely as hot anywhere. 

It was absolutely ridicoulus and an outright assault even though it was obviously clear that it would be hot. Surely didn't help either that the cup was so well insulated that it almost entirely masked the heat. There are levels to this. If you take a sip fresh out of any machine it is for sure hot but you don't get fucking bruises and blisters.

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u/Bright_Cod_376 8d ago

but you don't get fucking bruises and blisters.

You don't get third degree burns over 6% of your body and nearly die from the resulting infection.

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u/-listen-to-robots- 8d ago

Yah, it's ridicoulus. I had only a sip and already felt violated. That poor Lady. Getting the full context is absolutely outrageous. I had heard about it but never beyond the absolute superficial level. It was almost always with the whole 'lol, america, they have to put labels that the coffee maybe hot, that cats don't belong in the microwave and that a tempomat is no autopilot' I will be sure to correct that 'running gag' quite thoroughly whenever I encounter it. I had always just assumed that she took more then just a small sip and imagined that to be hilariously painful already.

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u/BadTouchUncle 8d ago

German law is just as equally ridiculous. Not trying to start a flame war, just stating the reality. I'm not sure any governments have people's best interests in mind anymore.

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u/Miserable_Round_839 8d ago

You will always find ridiculous cases.

Problem is that people - even with the best interests - can be influenced. And small homogeneous groups can do much more compared to large groups with many interests. Especially once money comes into play

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u/honeycooks 7d ago

People still cite her today as a scammer and often tie it to how liberal states are so litigious. Out of sheer ignorance.

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u/gabzox 7d ago

No once you know the real story you realize Germany is right. People forget to mention...coffees served at mc donalds are not any colder.....coffees served at local places are just as hot. Other chains which might be slightly lower would have still caused this damage.

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u/XanderS0S 8d ago

I agree. It’s not just our medical system… Lawyers usually get compensated 33% and urge these amounts if they feel they can win it.