Do you remember the Ford Pinto? The car that blew up when rear ended? Why should Ford be responsible for what happens if someone is burned alive in one of their cars? After all, Ford wasn't the one that rear ended the poor schmuck, right?
Ford KNEW that this was a problem. In a rear end collision, the bumper would be pushed into the gastank, the tank would be punctured, and gas would leak into the passenger compartment. This happened often and Ford would settle out of court for damages. These injuries could have been prevented if Ford spent an extra $2 to install a plastic protective baffle. However, the bean counters at Ford figured it was cheaper to payoff burn victims than to spend a couple of extra bucks per car. In court, this got Ford punitive damages. If you knowingly produce a dangerous product, then you can be liable for compensatroy and punitive damages.
McDonald's did just that. They produced coffee much hotter than is safe. It had nothing to do with taste; coffee should never be made that hot- it kills the flavor.
The elements of a tort are:
1) Duty owed
2) Breach of duty owed
3) Causation
4) Damages
All elements of a tort must be met for a person to be compensated. That is why McDonalds had to pay for damages. Punitives were also ordered up because McDonalds has known for some time that excessively high temp of their coffee was causing 3rd degree burns on numerous occassions. Contrary to what you here, Punitives are not awarded to make the plaintiff feel like they hit the jackpot, rather, they are ordered to punish the defendent. Insurance is prohibited by law for paying out for punitives.In rare instances, individuals can also be liable for criminal punsihment. That is what happened to executives at Beechnut when they knowingly sold sugar water as vitamin enriched apple juice for babies.Another example of punitive damages is the case agains SCE made famous by the movie "Erin Brokavich".
Here's a summary of the McDonalds lawsuit.Mind you, the woman merely wanted her meds paid for.
.) For years, McDonald's were aware they had a problem with the way they make their coffee -- that their coffee was served much hotter than the industry standard by at least 20 degrees. In fact, they knew its coffee sometimes caused serious injuries -- more than 700 incidents of scalding coffee burns in the past decade have been settled by the Corporation. Yet they never so much as consulted a burn expert regarding the issue. It has been said that serving coffee this hot reduces the amount of coffee a restaurant has to make in a day and optimizes taste. Therefore, they make more money.
2.) A McDonald's quality assurance manager testified in the case that the Corporation was aware of the risk of serving dangerously hot coffee and had no plans to either turn down the heat or to post warning about the possibility of severe burns, even though most customers wouldn't think it was possible.
3.) The woman, an 81-year old former department store clerk who had never before filed suit against anyone, said she wouldn't have brought the lawsuit against McDonald's had the Corporation not dismissed her request for compensation for medical bills. Her injuries were serious -- third degree burns on her groin, thighs and buttocks that required skin grafts and a seven-day hospital stay. In all, she was burned over six percent of her body.
4.) The woman was sitting in the passenger seat of a car driven by her grandson. They went through a drive through, then he pulled to a stop out of the way of the next car behind them so she could open the coffee. It was then, in a stopped car, that the coffee spilled. One myth of this case is that she was driving the car and tried to open the coffee while the car was moving. And, finally,
5.) A report in Liability Week, September 29, 1997, indicated that Kathleen Gilliam, 73, suffered first degree burns when a cup of coffee spilled onto her lap. Reports also indicate that McDonald's consistently keeps its coffee at 185 degrees, still approximately 20 degrees or more hotter than at other restaurants. Third degree burns occur at this temperature in just two to seven seconds, requiring skin grafting, debridement and whirlpool treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars and result in permanent disfigurement, extreme pain and disability to the victims for many months, and in some cases, years.
So going back to the discussion on Trainorders, I pointed out a few of these "McFacts" to the fellow who brought this case up. I made the good argument that there are things about our system of justice that needs work. But before you start naming case after case off as proof of this, do your homework. Of course, he didn't name case after case off to prove his point. He named this one. After I made the closing argument, so to speak, he wrote back, "If you put a cup in your lap, holding it with your legs, and drive off, hitting bumps along the way, the liquid contained within is likely to spill." Which means that he was listening.
In closing, do your homework, too. Don't believe everything you hear on TV, on radio, in print or on the internet. Leno may make good jokes about this, Limbaugh may get all sweaty and riled up and some guy hacking away at a computer in South Carolina may try his best to be Dennis Miller. But it doesn't mean it's so. If you do, you may end up thinking Al Gore invented the internet, cigarettes don't cause cancer and that a little old woman somewhere won 2.7 million dollars from McDonalds from something that was her fault in the first place.
By the way, the jury awarded her punitive damages of 2.7 million. The judge, however, lowered the dollar amount to just under $500,000. Something else that hasn't been reported widely.
