Hot Coffee

The documentary Hot Coffee by Susan Saladoff was exceptionally inspiring to contemplate the commonly accepted ideas on the United States legal system. Hot Coffee begins by clarifying the truth behind the lawsuit of Liebeck v. McDonalds Restaurants. After presenting what really happened to Stella Liebeck, the documentary leads into the tort reform movement that has been confining civil rights since the beginning. Showing how dissembled the tort reform has been, Hot Coffee presents the spilled coffee case and many other cases about how the tort reform is affecting different people, and the reproductions of constitutional rights being relinquished with, or without, knowledge of it occurring. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, 79 year-old Stella Liebeck was sitting in the passenger seat when she spilled her coffee on her lap while trying to add cream and sugar. The coffee was estimated to be somewhere between 180 to 190 degrees. At temperatures this high, she suffered from third-degree burns on her inner thighs, perineum, buttocks, and genital and groin areas. Showing the photos of these burns was intense and tragic. While her medical expenses totaling approximately $11,000, McDonald’s refused. Instead, McDonald’s countered with a generous offer of $800.
The lawsuit ended with Stella Liebeck’s injuries meriting an award of $200,000 compensatory damages; however that award was reduced proportionately to $160,000. The jury also awarded Ms. Liebeck $2.7 million in punitive damages, but because it was allegedly a fraudulent lawsuit, it was reduced by the trial court to $480,000 and stated that McDonald’s engaged in “willful, reckless, malicious, or wanton conduct”. Although this was a reasonable lawsuit, it was occurring when tort reform was gaining speed in the public eye, and was used in different means in the communities to help grow the idea of frivolous lawsuits.
A tort is a non-criminal civil wrong that is caused either on purpose or through negligence (Simon, Eddins