Oops, I spilled extremely hot coffee on my leg this morning and it burned me. I bought this coffee at a fast food place. A lawyer told me I should sue the fast food place because they served me the coffee and it was too hot!

Anyone remember this one?

Keep Lawsuits and Trial Lawyers in check. Vote for Prop 12!

A little knowledge is dangerous


And potentially very misleading.

Dear Are You:

Did you know the reason the jury awarded punitive damages against McDonalds? I'll tell you: McDonalds intentionally made their coffee too hot to drink without an extended period of cooling. Why would they do that? Simple. Because McDonalds ''efficiency experts'' determined that the company could save money that way. Turns out that in many Mickey D's people were coming in for breakfast and staying at a table, drinking refills and just talking, not buying burgers. The solution? Make the coffee so hot that it took a lot longer to drink it. And it worked. Subtract the cost of heating the coffee from the cost of the coffee not served as a result and Mickey makes more money. Literally millions of dollars a day more.

There was only one problem: the stuff was scalding people, especially people in the drive-thru lanes because Mickey did not bother to spend any of this new savings to make sure that people didn't get burned (like holders for the cups).

The woman who sued did not want to do so. She suffered third degree scalding on her genitals so that Mickey could keep its customers from getting a second cup of joe for free. She was hospitalized and had to endure several skin grafts to repair the burns. Ask a burn victim about pain if you dare. When she got out of the hospital she asked McDonalds to help her with the medical bills that she could not pay. Mickey refused to offer a dime.

When the jury found out what Mickey was up to, playing with fire and risking serious injury to its customers so that it didn't have to serve free refills, it found out at the same time that the only thing that Mickey cared about was money. Mickey was, after all, only a corporation charged with making as much profit as possible. Mickey had no heart, no compassion, no emotions of any kind, no morals, no scruples, nothing but a single-minded purpose to maximize the bottom line. Mickey needed to be impacted in the only place Mickey had feelings: its profits.

Then the jury found out that this was not the first case of scalding since Mickey turned up the heat. By the time this sweet, little grandmother asked Mickey to only help with her hospital bills, Mickey had already said no to over 750 others who had been similarly scalded, some of them children. Some asked for money. Others only asked that the coffee be returned to its original serving temperature. But Mickey did nothing, content to reap the reward of its new coffee policy.

The amount of the award that the jury decided upon was intended to be 10% of the profits Mickey realizes on a day's coffee sales. Not much of a disincentive, but intended as a warning that bigger judgments could be coming if Mickey didn't get the message and stop endangering its customers for profit.

Unfortunately even that judgment was cut back by the judge who thought it excessive and ordered a remittitur. The actual judgment awarded was about $800,000. By the time the enormous costs of the litigation were paid (Mickey hired the best defense lawyers it could find), the Plaintiff ended up with barely enough to pay her medical bills. Yes, she eventually got simply what she had asked for to begin with but had to spend years of her life fighting one of the biggest corporations in the world to get it.

Now what do you think needs to be kept in check?

$800,000 Judgment


Dear Mr. Gammon:

That poor old, little lady got an $800,000 judgment. Could you please let us know how much she had actually received? Could you also please let us know how much the lawyer had profited for his hard and compassionate work?

Sincerely,
Lisa

What about the Mc Pickle in Tenn

Haunted by Lawsuits: (London and Tennessee). Six years after the famous McDonalds ''hot coffee lawsuit'' made the US civil justice system the laughingstock of the world, McDonalds has remained a favorite target of lawsuits over food mishaps. In London, several McDonalds customers are suing over hot coffee, hot tea and even hot water.

In Tennessee, it was a pickle that did the damage, as a woman sued the restaurant for $110,000 after a hot pickle from a hamburger fell on her chin. (Reuters, August 2, 2000 and The Los Angeles Times, October 8, 2000)

''If you want to see something really scary, take a look at how these lawsuits impact the consumer,'' Bell said. ''Frivolous lawsuits, meritless litigation and class action abuse raise the costs of goods and services for everyone -- it's an invisible tax that we all pay, each day.''

According to the American Tort Reform Association, the cost of lawsuits amounts to an ''invisible tax'' of $1,200 for every man, woman and child in the United States, or nearly $5,000 for a family of four.