peplaw06
2
- Messages
- 8,660
- Reaction score
- 1
And of course, the people who are uneducated about the justice system and personal injury cases in particular see a headline that a woman gets $2.8 milllion for spilling coffee on herself and are outraged. Where's your $2.8 million right?
And I have dealt with probably 2 personal injury cases in my life, it's not how I may make my living. But I understand how the court system works, and I have defended what I thought was a frivolous suit in front of a jury. If it's truly frivolous, juries tend to figure it out. Much better than some legislator deciding what is frivolous and what isn't and what a maximum amount of damages should be for a given type of suit. One size fits all doesn't work in the court system.
And that is what a jury would be for as well. If the lid had popped off, then the manufacturer of the lid would have likely been brought into the case. They might have been partially responsible and comparative negligence may have said that they had to pay a portion of the award. There is no doubt however, that McDonald's practice of keeping coffee at those temperatures would have had some part to play in the burns. Just like they did in the Liebeck case. The jury probably thought she was to blame for some of what happened. But if she had done everything the same and the coffee was a reasonable temperature she probably wouldn't have had the type of burns she suffered. The coffee temp led to the third degree burns.
Did you know the jury picked the $2.7 million in punitive damages because it represented the amount of coffee sales McDonald's corporation makes in TWO DAYS?
