In July 2014, Daily Mail
reported of another incident of a Woman, 22, threatening to sue McDonald's after suffering painful
blisters because of hot chocolate spilled over her lap. It was Sam Smith from Litherland, Merseyside,
who suffered second degree burns after spilling a McDonald's hot chocolate over
her groin. She claims that she was so
severely injured that she may now require plastic surgery after the trip to the
Switch Island branch of the global fast food firm.
Although Stella Liebeck
case was presented as frivolous in media reports, it had important and
long-lasting implications for civil law in the U.S. A jury awarded her $200,000
in damages, later reduced to $160,000.there for sure was lot of hype about the
McDonalds' scalding coffee case. The initial Q was why should a company pay
when someone has spilt on themselves…… it is stated that McDonalds coffee was
not hot, it was scalding -- capable of almost instantaneous destruction of
skin, flesh and muscle. When the aged Liebeck
placed the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic lid from
the cup, the entire contents of the cup spilled into her lap. The sweatpants
Liebeck was wearing absorbed the coffee and held it next to her skin.
A
vascular surgeon determined that Liebeck suffered full thickness burns (or
third-degree burns) over 6 percent of her body, including her inner thighs,
perineum, buttocks, and genital and groin areas. She was hospitalized for eight
days, during which time she underwent skin grafting. The elderly woman who
became a punchline had 16% of her body covered in burns and McDonalds had ignored
700 earlier complaints about excessively hot drinks.
Stella Liebeck was
79-years-old in 1992 when she was in her grandson's parked car and spilled
coffee on her lap. Later reports suggest
that the court after viewing the
physical damage that she underwent they decided to give her a hefty sum. At the time, McDonalds earned roughly
$1.33million per day on coffee sales alone, so the jury felt it was appropriate
for them to pay the equivalent of two day's earnings.
Another point in Mrs
Liebeck's favor- which was pointed out in a documentary called 'Hot Coffee'-
was the fact that McDonalds ordered workers to brew their coffee between 180
degrees and 190 degrees. Typical at-home coffee machines brew their drinks at
about 30 degrees lower. A doctor
testified that a 180-degree liquid can cause third-degree burns in less than 15
seconds. 'I was not in it for the money.
I was in it because I wanted them to bring the temperature down so that other
people would not go through the same thing I did,' Mrs Liebeck said in an
interview included in the Retro Report. Mrs Liebeck's case turned into the
touchstone for complaints about excessive litigation, but many did not know the
details of the case due to her inability to speak out after signing on to the
confidential agreement reached between she and McDonalds.
She died at the age of 91
in 2004.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
News collated from various sites principally Dailymail.co.uk
