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-An 81-year-old woman has been awarded $2.9 million
after she sued McDonald's,
claiming their coffee was too hot.
-The public perception of it
is Stella Liebeck won a lottery --
she bought the coffee, she spilled it on herself,
and now look, she's a millionaire --
when, of course, the facts are much more complicated than that.
-Stella Liebeck was a 79-year-old widow
sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car
when she was burned on February 27, 1992.
She had recently quit her job as a department-store clerk
and moved to Albuquerque to be near her daughter.
-The day that the burns happened,
my mother and my nephew
went through the drive-through at McDonald's
and got breakfast and coffee,
and they pulled into the parking lot.
And in the Ford Probe, there's slanted surfaces everywhere.
There's no place to put the coffee.
She put it between her knees and lifted the lid off,
and, in the process of doing that, spilled the coffee,
and all of the hot liquid went into the sweat suit
that she was wearing and pooled in the seat.
-All I remember is trying to get out of the car.
I screamed, not realizing I was burned that bad.
I knew I was in terrible pain.
-The severity of the burns
caused Stella Liebeck to go into shock,
and her grandson immediately took her to the emergency room.
-She was burned over 16% of her body.
6% of the burns were third-degree.
She was in the hospital for a week.
-Medical bills were $10,000,
so Stella reached out to McDonald's
and asked to be reimbursed.
-We couldn't believe that this could happen
over spilling the coffee,
so we wrote a letter to McDonald's,
asking them to check the temperature of the coffee
and to give recompense for the medical bills,
and the response from McDonald's was an offer of $800.
-Stella Liebeck had never sued anyone
before Albuquerque attorney Ken Wagner took her case.
Before they went to trial, they tried twice
to settle out of court, but McDonald's refused.
-We bought a product. It was used as intended.
It was unreasonably hot
and therefore unreasonably dangerous,
and those were the essential facts.
-I was not in it for the money.
I was in it because I want them to bring the temperature down
so that other people will not go through the same thing I did.
-McDonald's policy was to serve coffee
between 180 and 190 degrees.
A burn expert testified that liquid at 180 degrees
could cause third-degree burns within 15 seconds.
Lawyers produced documents that showed
that between 1983 and 1992,
nearly 700 people claimed
that they had been burned by hot coffee at McDonald's.
-McDonald's was on big-time notice
that they had a product that was dangerous,
and it was burning people.
We argued that to the jury,
that they were callous and indifferent
and simply not turning down the temperature.
-An expert for McDonald's testified
that burns are exceedingly rare --
one for every 24 million cups of coffee served.
-They just said, "It's statistically insignificant,
and we're not going to change what we do."
-People interact with hot beverages all the time
in a fast-food restaurant,
and that doesn't necessarily mean
that the restaurant is doing something wrong.
-Attorney Tracy Jenks tried the case for McDonald's
and argued that Liebeck bore personal responsibility
because she spilled the coffee on herself,
and McDonald's coffee wasn't any hotter
than the coffee at other fast-food restaurants.
She said the reason the coffee was so hot
was because that's what customers wanted.
-McDonald's had a really, really strong reason
for why they brewed their coffee at the temperature they did.
It was an industrial standard
based on the maximum extraction of the flavor
and the maximum holding temperature.
-But the jury saw how liquid at that temperature can scald
when they were shown graphic photos
of Liebeck's legs and burned groin.
-The photos depicted where they had to graft the skin
from the side of her legs to close the third-degree burn.
And I think if people would have seen
the severity of the burns,
they would have realized it was not a laughing matter.
-After seven days of testimony and four hours of deliberation,
jurors unanimously agreed to award Stella $200,000
in compensatory damages,
but because she caused the spill,
they reduced that to $160,000.
Jurors then set punitive damages
to send the message to McDonald's
to turn down the temperature of the coffee.
-I remember I could see Judge Scott
going like this with his pencil, and I thought,
"Oh, I hope he's counting digits on the verdict form,"
and he was.
-They based the amount on the revenue
from two days of coffee sales -- $2.7 million.
The size of the award got the media's attention,
but it overshadowed the rest of the story.
Details of the case and the facts related
to how the jury made its decision went mostly unreported.
-Several days after the verdict,
I had news crews from France, Japan, Germany in my driveway
wanting to interview me.
I mean, I was stunned.
-After the verdict came in Wednesday, August 17th,
the Albuquerque Journal ran the first story.
The Associated Press and Reuters wire services
then filed reports,
and the story was picked up in dozens of newspapers worldwide.
It became an international news event.
But as the story's reach got bigger,
the word count got smaller.
In some papers, it was not more than a blurb.
-697 words in the Albuquerque Journal
became 349 words in the AP
and became as few as 48 words in various renderings
by major metropolitan newspapers.
48 words can't explain a lot,
and then "woman, coffee, millions"
sounds like a rip-off,
not like a logical consequence of a thoughtful trial.
-The report aired on more than a dozen national broadcasts
and twice as many local news shows.
The condensed telling of the story
created its own version of the truth.
Instead of pointing out she spilled the coffee
in the passenger seat of a parked car,
this was the new narrative.
-It seems she was holding a cup between her legs while driving.
-Clamped it between her legs,
drove down the street, spilled it, burned herself,
sued McDonald's, and collected.
-Stella has received letters saying stuff like...
-I was driving down the road.
I had no business driving down the road with the coffee
between my legs and all that stuff.
See, that's just plain ignorant.
-My mother was made the villain in this story.
It's like bullying. It feels like bullying.
-I mean, it's not like the McDonald's person
leaned over the car and poured it. It was an accident.
-Very much like urban legends, it is a very compelling story.
Once everybody decides what is true about something
and the media has been sort of an echo chamber for it,
then how do you deal with the fact that they might be wrong?
-Now she claims she broke her nose
on the sneeze guard at the Sizzler,
bending over looking at the chickpeas.
-"Ooh, my coffee was too hot!" It's coffee!
-Republican lawmakers crafting the Contract with America
seized the moment.
They tapped into public outrage over frivolous lawsuits
to promote the Common Sense Legal Reform Act.
Liebeck's case became exhibit "A."
-If a lady goes to a fast-food restaurant,
puts coffee in her lap, burns her legs,
and sues and gets a big settlement,
that in and of itself
is enough to tell you why we need to have tort reform.
-She spilled hot coffee on her lap
while sitting in her car and claimed it was too hot.
Every day, we hear about another outrageous lawsuit.
-Stella's portrayal as a scheming wannabe millionaire
was based on the jury's award,
but that amount was only a suggestion.
In reality, the judge
significantly reduced the punitive damages.
-The judge reduced the award to about $650,000.
-According to a source familiar with the case,
it was settled for less than $500,000.
Stella was not allowed to talk to the press,
but over the last two decades,
her lawsuit has become a part of the cultural discourse.
[ Laughter ]
-Pardon me. Excuse us.
-Ohh! Aah! Ohh!
Coffee!
Ohh!
We got a chance? -Do we have a chance?
You get me one coffee drinker on that jury,
you gonna walk out of there a rich man.
-[ Clicks tongue ]
-Stella's daughter says that, although over the years
some stories have given greater context and a new perspective,
such as the documentary "Hot Coffee,"
her family is still haunted
by a perception that doesn't seem to go away.
-♪ Plasma getting bigger, Jesus getting smaller ♪
♪ Spill a cup of coffee, make a million dollars ♪
-I like Toby Keith, but he did the "American Ride."
-♪ The fit's gonna hit the shan ♪
-Do we have to keep living this over and over and over again?
-Popular misunderstanding of the case is so ingrained
that even the legal system has had to learn to grapple with it.
In 2011, the Utah Supreme Court
ordered a personal-injury case retried
out of concern that the defense attorney
might have tainted the jury's decision
by comparing the case to Liebeck's.
Meanwhile, courtroom attorneys across the country
now use the case to screen potential jurors.
-It's a wonderful litmus test.
If you're putting someone on a jury,
you really have to know how they feel about this case
to know whether they're open to the facts
that you're going to present.
McDonald's has been, in the public mind, cast as the victim.
That Stella Liebeck needed to defend her reputation
is the saddest piece of this whole story, to me.
-Stella Liebeck died in 2004 when she was 91.
-The emotion that she went through,
she just felt like people were coming at her.
-McDonald's representatives didn't return e-mails or calls,
but according to franchisee handbooks,
coffee must now be held and served 10 degrees lower.
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