May 8, 2026
FIGHTING BACK - YOU'VE BEEN LIED TO: STELLA LIEBECK AND THE McDONALD'S HOT COFFEE CASE
A 79-year-old grandmother. Third-degree burns across 16 percent of her body. Eight days in the hospital. And a corporation that spent millions making her the punchline.
Garret Fisher takes on one of the most successfully distorted stories in American legal history: Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants. Almost everything the public thinks it knows about this case is wrong — and that's not an accident. McDonald's coffee in 1992 was served 30 to 40 degrees hotter than any competitor, hot enough to cause third-degree burns in under three seconds. The company had received more than 700 burn complaints. Stella Liebeck asked for $20,000 to cover her medical bills. McDonald's offered $800. What happened next — in the courtroom and in the press — is a masterclass in how corporations use public relations to rewrite the story of their own negligence.
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But more importantly, it's where YOU come in. Share your theories, debate the verdicts, and connect with fellow listeners who are just as obsessed with justice as you are. Did the jury get it right? What questions do you still have? Your comments and insights often shape future episodes.
We cover the trials that matter, but our community makes the conversation unforgettable. Come for Garret's signature cynical commentary, stay for the incredible discussions with thousands of true crime fans who get it.
Garret Fisher takes on one of the most successfully distorted stories in American legal history: Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants. Almost everything the public thinks it knows about this case is wrong — and that's not an accident. McDonald's coffee in 1992 was served 30 to 40 degrees hotter than any competitor, hot enough to cause third-degree burns in under three seconds. The company had received more than 700 burn complaints. Stella Liebeck asked for $20,000 to cover her medical bills. McDonald's offered $800. What happened next — in the courtroom and in the press — is a masterclass in how corporations use public relations to rewrite the story of their own negligence.
Join our new FB groups page here. Take the poll!
Join the Daily Crime & Justice community on social media! We're building a passionate group of true crime enthusiasts who love diving deep into the most shocking cases in America.
Follow us on Facebook and Instagram by searching "Daily Crime & Justice" on either platform.
You'll get exclusive behind-the-scenes content, breaking news updates on cases we're covering, and early alerts when new episodes drop. Our social media is where Garret Fisher's hottest takes live, including reactions that don't make it into the show.
But more importantly, it's where YOU come in. Share your theories, debate the verdicts, and connect with fellow listeners who are just as obsessed with justice as you are. Did the jury get it right? What questions do you still have? Your comments and insights often shape future episodes.
We cover the trials that matter, but our community makes the conversation unforgettable. Come for Garret's signature cynical commentary, stay for the incredible discussions with thousands of true crime fans who get it.
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Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning. I'm Garrett Fisher, Friday, May eighth,
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twenty twenty six, and we're closing out Week one of
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Fighting Back. I want to start today with a question.
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When I say McDonald's hot coffee case, what comes to mind?
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I'm going to guess it's something like, old woman spills
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coffee on herself while driving, sues McDonald's, wins millions of
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dollars for her own clumsiness, and America's legal system officially
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loses the plot. Late night hosts made jokes about it.
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Seinfeld did an episode. Politicians used it as their go
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to example of everything wrong with frivolous lawsuits. It became
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so embedded in the culture as a symbol of absurdity
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that a columnist literally created an annual award in the
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woman's name for the most ridiculous lawsuit of the year.
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Here is what actually happened. A seventy nine year old
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woman and sat in the passenger seat of a parked car,
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tried to open a cup of coffee to add cream
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and sugar, spilled it on her lap, and suffered third
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degree burns covering six percent of her body, including her
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inner thighs, her groin, and her genitals. She was hospitalized
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for eight days. She underwent skin grafting. She lost twenty
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pounds during her recovery, dropping to eighty three pounds. She
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spent two years in medical treatment. Her treating physician said
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her injury was one of the worst skald burns he
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had ever seen in his career. She asked McDonald's to
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pay her medical bills, which came to about twenty thousand dollars.
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McDonald's offered her eight hundred dollars. The version of this
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story you've heard your whole life is a lie. And
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the lie was not an accident. It was the product
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of a well funded corporate pr campaign designed to do
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exactly what it did, turn a legitimate consumer safety case
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into a national joke, and use that joke to get
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the legal system's ability to hold corporations accountable for the
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harm they cause. Today, we're going to take that lie apart,
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piece by piece. This is the story of Stella Lebec.
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February twenty seventh, nineteen ninety two, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Stella
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Lebek was seventy nine years old, a retired department store
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clerk who had recently moved to Albuquerque to be near
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her daughter. On the morning of February twenty seven, she
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went out with her grandson Chris to the airport, and
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on the way back they pulled through a McDonald's drive through.
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Chris ordered breakfast, Stella got a forty nine cent cup
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of coffee. They pulled into a parking space. The car
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had no cup holders and a slanted dashboard, and Chris
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parked the car so his grandmother could add cream and
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sugar to her coffee without spilling it while in motion.
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She put the cup between her knees and pulled back
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the lid. The slick styrofoam cup tipped and the entire
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contents poured into her life. The cotton sweatpants she was
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wearing absorbed the liquid and held it against her skin.
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Chris jumped out immediately to help her, but the coffee
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was already doing what coffee at that temperature does to
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human tissue in under three seconds. By the time he
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got her to the emergency room, she had third degree burns,
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the most severe classification, burns that destroyed the full thickness
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of skin and extend into the underlying tissue across her groin.
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Her inner thighs, her buttocks, and her genitals. The burns
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covered six percent of her body surface area at third
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degree severity, and lesser burns across another ten percent skin grafts.
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Eight days in the hospital two years of medical treatment,
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she lost twenty percent of her body weight during her recovery.
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She had never sued anyone in her life. What she
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wanted was for McDonald's to cover her medical bills. Her
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family initially asked for about two thousand dollars, plus her
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daughter's lost wages from taking time off to care for her.
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McDonald said no. Over the following six months, Stella and
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her family negotiated directly, eventually asking for twenty thousand dollars
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to cover ongoing medical costs. McDonald's last offer was eight
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hundred dollars, not eight thousand dollars. Eight hundred dollars for
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third degree burns requiring skin grafts and two years of treatment.
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That is when she hired a lawyer, Attorney Ken Wagner,
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filed suit accusing McDonald's of gross negligence for selling coffee
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that was unreasonably dangerous, and when the discovery process opened
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up McDonald's internal records, what came out of those files
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is the heart of this case and the reason the
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jury did what it did. McDonald's corporate policy required all
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franchises to serve coffee at between one hundred eighty and
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one hundred and ninety degrees fahrenheit. That is not an
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incidental number, it's in their operations manual specified required enforced.
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At one hundred ninety degree spilled coffee produces third degree
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burns in under three seconds. Most other restaurants at the
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time were serving coffee at around one hundred sixty degrees
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still hot, but at that temperature, a person has roughly
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twenty seconds to wipe away a spill before serious burns occur.
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That gap at twenty seconds versus three seconds is the
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entire case. McDonald's coffee was not just hot. It was
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hot in a way that eliminated the margin of safety
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that every other restaurant in the country had left in place.
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And McDonald's knew this because they had been told seven
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hundred times. From nineteen eighty two to nineteen ninety two,
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the company had received more than seven hundred complaints from
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customers burned by their coffee, including children and infants. They
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had paid out over five hundred thousand dollars in prior
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burn settlements. The Shriners Burn Institute, one of the most
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respected burn treatment facilities in the United States, had published
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warnings to the franchise food industry that serving beverages above
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one hundred thirty degrees was causing unnecessary, serious skald injuries.
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McDonald's own quality control manager testified during the trial that
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these seven hundred complaints were not sufficient to cause the
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company to reevaluate its coffee temperature. He said they had
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more pressing dangers to worry about. He also testified, and
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this is the part that stuck with the jury, that
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McDonald's coffee at its required serving temperature was not fit
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for consumption because it would burn the mouth and throat
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if someone tried to drink it immediately after being served.
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Let me say that again. McDonald's own witness testified that
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their coffee was too hot to drink. They were selling
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a product you literally could not use as intended without
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injuring yourself. Before trial, Stella's attorney offered to settle for
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three hundred thousand dollars. McDonald's refused. A court appointed mediator,
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a retired judge, recommended that McDonald's settle for two hundred
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and twenty five thousand dollars as a reasonable resolution. McDonald's
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refused that too. The judge called their behavior callous. The
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case went to the jury the verdict. The jury of
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twelve heard eight days of testimony. They saw photographs of
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Stella's burns, graphic medically documented images of what one hundred
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and ninety degree coffee does to human tissue over the
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course of eight days in the hospital. They heard experts
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on both sides argue about temperature and burn physics. They
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learned about the seven hundred prior complaints. They heard McDonald's
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own witness say the coffee wasn't fit to drink, and
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then they deliberated. They found McDonald's eighty percent responsible for
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Stella's injuries and Stella herself twenty percent at fault, a
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reasonable apportionment given that she did spill the coffee even
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though the coffee was unreasonably dangerous. They awarded her two
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hundred thousand dollars in compensatory damages, reduced to one hundred
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sixty thousand dollars because of her twenty percent fault, and
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then for damages. They did something that made headlines around
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the world. They awarded two point seven million dollars. One
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of the jurors explained how they arrived at that number.
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They wanted to send a message proportional to what McDonald's
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could actually feel, so they calculated two days of the
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company's coffee revenue two days two point seven million dollars.
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After the verdict, the judge, who had already called McDonald's
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behavior callous, reduced the punitive damages to four hundred eighty
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thousand dollars, which brought the total award to six hundred
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forty thousand dollars. Both sides appealed, and the case ultimately
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settled out of court for a confidential amount reported to
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be less than six hundred thousand dollars. Stella Libeck did
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not become a millionaire. She received a settlement for her
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injuries and her medical bills, and then she spent the
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rest of her life. She died in two thousand and
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four at ninety one, feeling like a helpless victim of
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people who had decided she was a good story to tell.
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Her daughter said, the emotion that she went through, she
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just felt like people were coming at her. After the
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break how a legitimate consumer safety case became the most
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famous punchline in American legal history. Why that didn't happen
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by accident, and what it cost all of us? How
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the story got rewritten. The Albuquerque Journal ran the first
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story about the verdict. It was a small piece local news.
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The Associated Press picked it up. By the time it
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had moved through the wire and been republished by newspapers
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around the world, the facts had been stripped down to
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a single punchy narrative. Old woman spills coffee on herself
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wins three million dollars. No mention that she wasn't driving,
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No mention that she was in a parked car. No
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mention of the seven hundred prior complaints, No mention of
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the skin grabs or the eight days in the hostel
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fiddle or the two years of treatment. No mention that
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the judge had already reduced the awards substantially. Just old
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Woman coffee millions. Late night television ran with it. Seinfeld
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did an episode, Jay Leno told jokes. The case became
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cultural shorthand for American absurdity, proof that the lawsuit culture
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had gone so far off the rails that a person
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could get rich for spilling their own coffee Andy Rooney
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at CBS said it was evidence that suing had become
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a popular American pastime. A columnist named Randy Cassingham created
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something called the Stella Awards, an annual book series naming
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the most ridiculous lawsuits in the country, named after Stella
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Leebeck as their patron saint. None of these people, from
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what the record shows, had looked at the actual case.
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They were repeating a story that had been distilled to
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the point of inversion, a story where McDonald's was the
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victim and Stella Leebeck was the aggressor. But this didn't
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just happen organically. The distorted narrative accelerated because business interests
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and their allies in Congress saw what it could do
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for them, and they deliberately amplified it the tort reform campaign.
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In nineteen ninety four, the same year as the Libec verdict,
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Republican lawmakers drafting the Contract with America were pushing legislation
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called the Common Sense Legal Reform Act, which would cap
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damages in personal injury cases and restrict consumer's ability to
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sue corporations. They needed a poster child, a case so
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obviously absurd that the public would support limiting lawsuit damages
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without thinking too hard about who those limits would actually protect.
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Stella Libec's case was handed to them on a silver platter, or,
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more precisely, in a styrofoam cup. Congressman John Kasich of
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Ohio went on television and said, the hot coffee case,
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in and of itself, is enough to tell you why
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we need reform. Business groups funded radio ads featuring a
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dramatized version of the story woman in moving car coffee
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spills Jackpot and ran them in markets where tort reform
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legislation was being debated. The Chamber of Commerce, insurance companies,
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and large corporations that faced significant liability exposure all had
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financial interest in limiting what juries could award, and they
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poured money into a coordinated public messaging effort that used
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Stella Libec as its face. In the early nineteen nineties,
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big corporations paid millions of dollars to shape public perception
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of this one case. The goal was not to accurately
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report what happened in an Albuquerque courtroom. The goal was
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to make the American public angry enough at Jackpot justice
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to support laws that would make it harder for individuals
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to hold corporations accountable it worked. Laws were passed in
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Congress and across state legislatures, capping damages in personal injury cases,
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limiting what juries could award for pain and suffering in
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medical malpractice cases, and restrict access to the civil court
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system in ways that disproportionately affected the people with the
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least resources to fight back. The tort reform movement, which
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had been building for years, used the Lebec case as
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its accelerant, and the legend of the greedy coffee lady
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burned through American culture so thoroughly that even people who
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should have known better, journalists, lawmakers, legal commentators repeated it
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without checking a single fact. Stella Libeck's attorney, Ken Wagner
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said something that I think gets to the heart of it.
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This story isn't about McDonald's or about missus Leebeck per se.
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It's about the media's failure to do its job in
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a measured way. The way the political wins were blowing.
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Politicians seized on this, and they don't do any fact checking.
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We've all lost out because of the basic fact that
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the media didn't do its job. And Stella herself said
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in a nineteen ninety five interview. I was not in
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it for the money. I was in it because I
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wanted them to bring the temperature down so that other
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people would not go through the same thing I did.
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That is the case. A woman got badly hurt by
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a product that the company knew was dangerously hot, had
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been warned about seven hundred times, had already paid out
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more than half a million dollars in prior settlements, and
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refused to change. She asked them to pay her medical bills.
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They offered her eight hundred dollars. She took them to court.
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Twelve regular people heard all the evidence, saw the photographs,
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learned about the seven hundred complaints and the internal temperature policy,
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and the own witness who said the coffee was too
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hot to drink, and they sided with her. The day
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after the verdict, McDonald's and Albuquerque dropped the temperature of
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their coffee. The judge's ruling noted that this change was
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a direct consequence of the verdict. The system worked exactly
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as it was supposed to work. A corporation was held
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accountable for documented, repeated, foreseeable harm, and they changed their behavior. Then,
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a well funded pr campaign spent millions of dollars, making
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sure nobody understood that's what had happened. Why this matters
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beyond Stella, I want to close on something broader, because
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this episode is not really about a cup of coffee.
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