Via Ezra Klein, this LA Times piece on what they call ‘legal urban legends’:
Merv Grazinski set his Winnebago on cruise control, slid away from the wheel and went back to fix a cup of coffee.
You can guess what happened next: The rudderless, driverless Winnebago crashed.
Grazinski blamed the manufacturer for not warning against such a maneuver in the owner’s manual. He sued and won $1.75 million.
His jackpot would seem to erase any doubt that the legal system has lost its mind. Indeed, the Grazinski case has been cited often as evidence of the need to limit lawsuits and jury awards.
There’s just one problem: The story is a complete fabrication.
It is one of the more comical tales in an anthology of legal urban legends that have circulated widely on the Internet, regaling millions with examples of cluelessness and greed being richly rewarded by the courts. These fables have also been widely disseminated by columnists and pundits who, in their haste to expose the gullibility of juries, did not verify the stories and were taken in themselves.
Read the whole thing.
DougJ
This is exactly why we need tort reform.
db
This is an utterly depressing story for me.
I had my hopes set high for an early retirement.
db
DougJ – I can’t tell if you are serious or joking. Either way, your comment has me laughing hard given that the story that elicited your comment is a complete lie.
We need tort reform to stop urban legends?
KC
Wow. I remember hearing about the McDonald’s case on Rush a longtime ago. I also heard about the lady arguing in the diner with her boyfriend then suing the diner after slipping on coffee she threw in his face. A professor I had told me that the McDonald’s case was far more complex than I had been let on to believe; however, the diner one I never really doubted. Worse, I’ve been in discussins with people in which I or they tossed these anecdotes around as if they were true. This makes me wonder about the other lawsuit abuse stories I’ve heard over the years. Honestly, we really need to look into this, especially if we’re going to start curbing our rights to seek compensation for injuries inflicted by faulty products, etc.
carpeicthus
The tort reform cause has long relied on extreme distortion or fabrication. Unlike most urban legends, these are invented with particular malice and extremely effective.
carpeicthus
The tort reform cause has long relied on extreme distortion or fabrication. Unlike most urban legends, these are invented with particular malice and extremely effective.
goonie bird
More reason for tort reform these greedy trial lawyers need to be stopped this is another outrage cuased by these miserble vultures after all they just recently did it for the firearms manifactueres then lets do it for the rest of out companies AND LET US THE FIRST THIG WE DO LET US KILL ALL THE LAWYERS
DougJ
Whoops! I didn’t read the full post, db. My bad.
jg
The ‘tort reform’ cry is another example of people being led to vote against their interests. Big companies hate being sued so they make up bullshit horror stories. The FOX/Rush media blames it on liberals and suddenly theres a movement. The ability to sue is how the free market polices itself. If we lose the ability to sue companies won’t have to spend so much on product testing since if the product blows up we can’t sue. The ability to sue is what keep companies from producing defective products.
And of course I know its a joke. I can find Snopes.com.
Geoduck
I highly recommend the snopes.com site mentioned in the article. Stop in there once in a while, and you can get a rundown on the latest rumors making the rounds.
M. Scott Eiland
It’s always worthwhile to check the veracity of a story that’s “too crazy to be true”–if for no other reason than to have one’s morale bolstered by the news that one particular case of jury idiocy didn’t happen is a good thing when it happens. However, that says nothing about the usefulness of tort reform. My favorite proposal: do away with punitive damages and increase the maximum criminal fines for the kinds of things that companies do that result in punitive damages–along with substantial prison sentences for corporate executives if they are convicted of knowingly covering up product defects or engage in other such conduct.
Pug
When I hear people repeat these stories I just shake my head. You can’t convince them they aren’t true.
The McDonald’s story is one everybody knows is true. It’s like all those Vietnam vets who were spit on in airports all over America when they returned. The one Sean Hannity repeats all the time. Total BS by folks with a political agenda.
KC
One thing that’s always interested me is the history of lawsuits. While I haven’t read specifically on the subject itself, I’ve read more than a few history books in which the main characters, people like our founding fathers, either threaten to sue or straight out sue each other over what seem to be silly things (poltical slights, etc.). I’m also interested to know about corporate lawsuits, which companies are suing other companies for competative advantage and not because of outright wrongdoing. People in the environmental resources field here in California have told me that big agribusiness companies are always suing one another over water rights, etc. All this stuff would be interesting to know about I think. After all, if we’re going to curb useless and wasteful lawsuits, why not better define and understand what is useless and wasteful both historically and currently.
Kathleen
We need tort reform to stop urban legends?
tort reform! it can do anything – get those greasy dishes clean, wipe out the trade deficit, rescue the kitty from the tree!
Jill
Insurance premiums aren’t high because of lawyers and lawsuits, they are high because of lying and profit grubbing insurance companies.
Lis Riba
Ages ago, in one of the perennial Usenet debates, I researched the McDonald’s coffee case. I wrote up what I could find, in nice concise bullet points at http://www.osmond-riba.org/lis/essay_mcdonalds.htm.
Anderson
I’m too lazy to google it up, but there’s a great account of the McDonald’s hot coffee case floating around.
Evidently the McD’s officers who testified were just fantastically unsympathetic and uncoached; their experts folded under cross; and they were left to admit that they’d heard numerous reports of injuries and never done a thing about their coffee temp.
Now, that doesn’t go to the merits; but remember, a jury has to decide based on what’s in front of it, and by all accounts, McD’s simply blew this one.
ape
thank god somebody on the right has had the courage to admit this..
these things are made up on so many levels..
as well as the basic facts: level of settlement/ damages (figure taken out the air/ initial award changed on appeal)/ reason for settlement/ damages (was it punitive?)
i have been saying this for years. tediously, when i receive a circular email with these ‘crazy cases’ listed on them i used to reply explaining the history of fabrication in cases i know and that there are far, far more incidents where people are harmed by others without legal recourse than there are of people being compensated when they don’t deserve it.
i asked them to sent it backwards along the chain. i’m sure this never happened.
you can’t convince anyone.. it is a deeply held belief of everyone in the world that someone’s getting something for nothing and it’s an OUTRAGE.
companies who like to fill up kids with heavy metals, and the Republican senators in their pockets, benefit from this inclination, as does Rush. everyone loves tort deform.
Mr Furious
I recycled some of points from Lis Riba’s link upthread (thanks) for a post on my blog, and got a visit from Ted Frank at overlawyered.com. As you might expect, we don’t see eye to eye. The full exchange is at my place.
But my final point to him (and others) is this:
Ted
Perhaps Cole can take account of the criticisms of the LA Times piece published on overlawyered.com, rather than unthinkingly repeating what he heard from a friend. Or are friend-of-a-friend stories okay if they oppose tort reform?
If this is the same Lis Riba I went to school with, she’s a very nice person, but she’s completely wrong about the McDonald’s coffee case. McDonald’s coffee temperature is not unusual at all; these days, the better home coffee-makers even serve coffee that hot. Because coffee is supposed to be brewed and served at a high temperature–if you don’t believe me, check the coffee afficionado sites, they certainly don’t have an axe to grind, aren’t even thinking about Stella Liebeck when they write their FAQs, and all recommend temperatures higher than McDonald’s. And, indeed, Starbucks has made themselves very wealthy by selling coffee served at a temperature higher than McDonald’s served their coffee to Liebeck.
Thankfully, the vast majority of courts throw out hot-coffee-spill cases as meritless. Liebeck is notable because it was an aberrational exception where the judge got it wrong and let it get to a jury that then voted based on sympathy and misunderstanding of the phrase “statistical significance.” And, worse, you now have law professors and the LA Times acting like this case has a shred of merit, and training a generation of lawyers to make an already malfunctioning legal system worse.
Deoxy
Pug,
“The McDonald’s story is one everybody knows is true.”
Uh, that’s because it IS true. Hello? REALITY?!? Pug might like to speak with you sometime…
Jill,
Yeah, that’s why doctor-owned and -funded insurance companies go out of business – because they are so money-grubbing that they charge themselves out of business. Go do just a LITTLE research before you open your mouth.
ape,
“companies who like to fill up kids with heavy metals, and the Republican senators in their pockets, benefit from this inclination, as does Rush. everyone loves tort deform.”
Yes, and you’ve offered SO much proof of THESE urban legends, yes? The best defense to an urban legend is, afterall, MORE urban legends, is that it?
Mr Furious,
Having worked in food service, I can tell you that the industry standard for coffee is 190 F. Also, having researched it specifically for this topic, I can also tell you that home coffee makers, while usually a little lower, are also quite hot (many 170+).
ppGaz
Check the facts.
Check the facts. Most home coffeemakers brew coffee at 160 degrees or lower, which is quite hot, but drinkable. You don’t need to take my word for this, a simple meat thermometer will serve to test your own.
Some facts about the McDonalds case that most demagogues won’t tell you:
1. The “huge award” often cited was never paid. Courts reduced it, and the final settlement was sealed.
2. The original award was calculated, deliberately, to be a few days’ Mcdonalds’ worldwide coffee sales revenue.
3. The plaintiff originally asked just for medical costs, a few tens of thousands of dollars. Stonewalled, offered only $800, she sought tort relief. The resulting discovery process revealed information from inside McDonalds’ management ….
4. McDonalds was already processing at least dozens of claims for injury caused by scalding coffee, and had internal memos which indicated that 190 degree water will cause third degree burns. This was the smoking gun that resulted in the huge award that was never paid.
5. McDonalds used to serve its coffee in a soft styrofoam cup that rather easily collapsed in the hand, which popped off the lid and discharged the scalding liquid into the lap of the hapless customer. The cups they use now are rigid and will not collapse in the hand.
6. The plaintiff suffered third degree burns to her crotch and required a series of painful skin grafts.
McDonalds was penalized for its arrogant “blame the customer” attitude and its refusal to pay any claims for injury due to its product.
For another look at the case:
What Rush Didn’t Tell You
Ted
PPGaz, you’re just repeating a bunch of urban legends. For example, the styrofoam cup claim is completely false, as is the claim that McDonald’s refused to pay “any” claims. (McDonald’s would pay claims if a McDonald’s employee was responsible for the spill.) “Hundreds of complaints” equals one complaint for every 24 million cups of coffee, which is the very definition of “not unreasonably dangerous.”
Read Overlawyered.com for *all* of the details, and not just the ones that the trial lawyers bar emphasize.
Ted
PPGaz, did you read the “What Rush didn’t tell you” article you linked to? It agrees with me and Deoxy.
“However, the National Coffee Association of USA recommends that coffee be brewed at 195-205 degrees Fahrenheit and, if not drunk immediately, should be maintained at a temperature of 180-190 for optimal flavor. “
ppGaz
Uh, no, I bought and drank from many hundreds of those cups myself. They were …. weird. It’s hard to compare them to anything, actually. Very soft, to the point that just holding them would collapse the sides and cause the lid to pop off. In the large size, I’d say that cup collapse and lid shedding would be in the “likely” category.
Nothing “legendary” about them. They sold them for years.
Other fast food outlets have also used similar cups, but they have pretty much disappeared from the marketplace now.
So what? First of all, they’re wrong, to get off topic. It is not necessary to brew at that temperature, and with a simple meat thermometer, you can check the brewed temperature of your home machine, and all your neighbors and friends. It’s going to be nowhere near that temperature. While the water entering the brew basket or chamber may be hotter, but the time it spends time on the grounds, and reaches your cup, the temperature will be between 145 and 165 degrees, and if you drink that coffee, you will find it quite hot. The only thing you get by holding coffee at temperatures higher than that is rapid deterioration of the coffee. Within minutes, it begins to take on a burned and oxidized flavor, which is known around here as “office coffee.” It tastes like shit. I can tell the difference between coffee just brewed and coffee brewed ten minutes ago, just by the taste. If you want to protect the flavor of coffee, the best thing to do is to put it in the refreigerator and chill it, then reheat it in a microwave for drinking. Every minute at a high temperature further degrades the flavor. High serving temps are basically a cover for cheap coffee. The high temp masks the crappy flavor. Good quality coffee tastes great at moderate temperatures, and tastes good even at room temperature.
NCA is a creature of importers and distributors. Their recommendations appear to be aimed at convincing restaurateurs to serve coffee at temperatures “preferred” by the public. However, I’d propose that these preferences are based mostly on lifetimes of drinking swill, the cheap retail coffees sold in vacuum cans in supermarkets (Folgers, Maxwell House, etc). Appreciation of good coffee on a large scale is a rather recent development. And as Bill Maher recently pointed out, most of the “coffee” sold in places like Starbucks is actually a milkshake with coffee in it, loaded up with syrups, dairy products, and other additives.
Second, NCA was not a party to the lawsuit, but perhaps they should have been. McDonalds knew the extent of the hazard presented by their product, and did nothing to abate it. That’s why they paid a large award.
Deoxy
ppGaz,
1) The styrofoam cup is false IN THIS CASE. (Some people may have indeed gotten styrofoam cups, but not Ms. Liebeck.)
2) Ms. Liebeck took the lid off herself and put the cup SANS LID between her legs.
3) Your “So what?” to the NCA recommendations – Um, so what if you think coffee should be held at a lower temperature? THAT IS THE INDUSTRY STANDARD, used by thousands of restaurants across the country every day. My boss reamed somebody out for having coffee not hot enough (190 F). That is the real world, all over the coutnry every day. (And still today.)
4) Yes, many even moderately expensive home coffee makers now routinely break 170 F, and people are known to put thir cups directly under the basket to get fresh coffee at that temperature (I’ve seen it), then sip at it immediately. That’s what they like – and the human mouth CAN withstand that temperature (seen that, too).
5) No, the award was paid because a) the executives didn’t appear “sympathetic” enough, and b) the jurors completely and utterly misunderstood the term “statistically insignificant”. Go read what the jurors themselves said afterwards.
Of course McDonald’s knew the “extent of the hazard” – everyone over the age of 2 knows the “extent of the hazard” or hot liquid. Of course, we also know the extent of the hazrd of playing in highway traffic. Spilling coffee of yourself is YOUR OWN FAULT.
Don
We can haggle over who says what temperatures are right and which are wrong, but personally I need little information past the fact that McDonalds served a beverage at a temperature sufficient to cause 3rd degree burns. If it’s going to make me need a skin graft I don’t think it’s drinkable.
Deoxy
And yet, literally millions of people in this country alone choose to buy that same beverage, served that same temperature.
Also, as I said, a sizable minority of them sip it while it’s still hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns. The human mouth (once it gets used to it) is pretty amazing.
Actually, that’s true of the human body in general. As I mentioned, I worked food service for a time, and my hands became much more able to bear heat – even now, I can still touch the “hot” plates they bring at any restaurant without burning myself, and I’ve seen people get burned on them. And the COOKS where I worked… WOW! They could take pans out of steam wells with their bare hands (did it routinely) and walk off with them. That’s 212 F, for those of you not paying attention.
In short, it’s only going to make you need a skin graft if you behave stupidly (which is no one’s fault but your own).
Anderson
Trial lawyers love posting accounts of this case on their websites. From one of those:
This he’s telling a jury that’s seen photos of this woman’s 3d-degree burns.
Note to defense lawyers: don’t ever, ever let your client use the phrase “statistically insignificant” in front of a jury.
To my defense-lawyer eye, this looks like a case that some legal hotshot failed to take seriously and put minimal effort into. McD’s should’ve settled, and failing that, should’ve put on a good case, which they likely would’ve won.
Ted
McDonald’s shouldn’t have settled: the case was based on a frivolous legal theory, and should have been thrown out by the judge.
The argument that “bad lawyering” is what made the difference only demonstrates further the need for tort reform. Businesses shouldn’t succeed or fail based on the sophistry of their lawyers. That’s the path to Aristophanes’ Cloud-Cuckoo Land.
donovong
I want a Winnebago. And a pony.
Comrade Luke
Can I just point out that the LA Times story linked to is also a nice study of why the newspaper industry is sinking.
That was MAYBE a two page story, sliced and diced into half a dozen, with no Print or Single Page option, specifically to boost page views.
Totally annoying.