![]() ![]() You can’t believe everything that the media says. ![]() She might have won the trial, but she lost her dignity and her reputation. Stella Liebeck became a joke, a laughing stock, a punchline. They awarded her with 2.7 million dollars, which the judge reduced to $640,000, and Liebeck and McDonald’s eventually settled out of court for under $600,000.īut the media latched on to the $2.7 million, and so the urban legend goes that a dumb lady spilled hot coffee on herself while driving, sued, and became a millionaire. She was in real pain, and the jury was aware of it. She had to get skin grafts, lost over twenty pounds, and spent over two weeks in the hospital. She got third-degree burns over 6% of her body and first to second-degree burns over 16% of her body. Her sweat pants acted like a sponge and held the coffee against her groin, buttocks, and thighs. Stella Liebeck was a 79-year-old lady wearing sweat pants sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car when she removed the lid to add cream and sugar and accidentally spilled the cup on her lap. They had over 700 separate reports of severe burns caused by their overly hot coffee and they simply ignored them or paid off the victims until Stella Liebeck came along. Their coffee was sold at 180–190 ☏, which is enough to cause a third-degree burn in as little as two seconds. The fact is that McDonald’s knew that they had a dangerous product. They were eager to portray her as the villain and McDonald’s as the victim. The media blasted her, mocked her, and twisted the facts to depict her as greedy, sue-happy, and eager to manipulate the system. She became the poster child for frivolous lawsuits, a reputation that she did not deserve. She’s the lady that burned herself with hot coffee and successfully sued McDonald’s. Liebeck eventually received only a fraction of that amount, and was made a pariah.You might not know Stella Liebeck’s name, but you know who she is. The Albuquerque jury had awarded her $2.6 million in punitive damages, after hearing testimony that McDonald’s had ignored hundreds of customers’ complaints that its coffee was too hot jurors sought to send the company a message. She sustained third-degree burns and required skin grafts. Liebeck had been sitting in a parked car, not driving, as some accounts had it. This attention distracted public attention from what had actually happened. The story was recounted in news reports, became comedy material on late night talk shows and television sitcoms, and was reshaped again by corporate-backed political operatives, who used the it as an argument against frivolous lawsuits against corporations. She was ridiculed as the little old lady who spilled coffee on herself and walked away with millions. News of that award placed the retiree from Albuquerque, NM in an unflattering spotlight. A jury awarded her $2.8 million in damages. When the company offered her only $800, she hired a lawyer, filed a lawsuit and won. Liebeck, a retired department store clerk, asked McDonald’s for help with her medical bills. Her injuries resulted in a hospital stay and more than $10,000 in medical bills. ![]() In 1992, Stella Liebeck, 79, was burned when a cup of McDonald’s coffee that spilled into her lap. ![]()
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