“Trial By Jury: What’s the Big Deal?” is an animated educational presentation for high school civics classes in Georgia to increase court literacy among young people. This presentation was created to be used by high school civics teachers as a tool in fulfilling four specific requirements of the Social Studies Civics and Government performance standards.

This animated presentation reviews the history and importance of trial by jury through a discussion of the Magna Carta, the Star Chamber, the trial of William Penn, the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Also covered in the presentation are how citizens are selected for jury duty, the role of a juror, and the importance of an impartial and diverse jury.

The State Bar of Georgia’s Law-Related Education Program offers several other opportunities for students and teachers to explore the law. Students can participate in Journey Through Justice, a free class tour program at the Bar Center, during which they learn a law lesson and then participate in a mock trial. Teachers can attend free workshops correlated to the Georgia Performance standards on such topics as the juvenile and criminal justice systems, federal and state courts, and the Bill of Rights. The LRE program also produces the textbook An Introduction to Law in Georgia for use in middle and high school classrooms.

You may view “Trial By Jury: What’s the Big Deal?” at www.gabar.org/cornerstones_of_freedom/civics_video/.
For a free DVD copy, e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call
404-527-8792. For more information on the LRE Program,
contact Deborah Craytor at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or
404-527-8785.

Anecdotal descriptions of a few atypical lawsuits intended to shock or amuse the public have been the  cornerstone of the business community’s anti-jury advertising and public relations campaign since the 1980s. Focusing on a few rare, anecdotal cases, instead of the majority of cases that pass through the courts each year, feeds into a false and dangerous perception that the system is overflowing with frivolous lawsuits. Often such verdicts have either been thrown out or substantially reduced by trial judges or appellate courts, which is exactly how the system is supposed to work. Yet the public is given the false impression that a plaintiff received a windfall, a defendant was financially ruined, or the system failed. This is particularly irresponsible when, as is typical, cases are not cited by name or even by date so they can be checked for accuracy.  When journalists or researchers do track them down, they find in virtually every situation that such cases have been misreported and misused.

The “McDonald’s coffee” case. We have all heard it: a woman spills McDonald’s coffee, sues and gets $3 million. Here are the facts of this widely misreported and misunderstood case: Stella Liebeck, 79 years old, was sitting in the passenger seat of her grandson’s car having purchased a cup of McDonald’s coffee. After the car stopped, she tried to hold the cup securely between her knees while removing the lid. However, the cup tipped over, pouring scalding hot coffee onto her. She received third-degree burns over 16 percent of
her body, necessitating hospitalization for eight days, whirlpool treatment for debridement of her wounds, skin grafting, scarring, and disability for more than two years.  Morgan, The Recorder, September 30, 1994. Despite these extensive injuries, she offered to settle with McDonald’s for $20,000. However, McDonald’s refused to settle. The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages -- reduced to $160,000 because the jury found her 20 percent at fault -- and $2.7 million in punitive damages for McDonald’s
callous conduct. (To put this in perspective, McDonald’s revenue from coffee sales alone is in excess of $1.3 million a day.) The trial judge reduced the punitive damages to $480,000. Subsequently, the parties entered a post-verdict settlement. According to Stella Liebeck’s attorney, S. Reed Morgan, the jury heard the following evidence in the case:¹

1. By corporate specifications, McDonald’s sells its coffee at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit;
2. Coffee at that temperature, if spilled, causes third-degree burns (the skin is burned away down to the muscle/fatty-tissue layer) in two to seven seconds;
3. Third-degree burns do not heal without skin grafting, debridement and whirlpool treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars and result in permanent disfigurement, extreme pain and disability of the victim for many months, and in some cases, years;
4. The chairman of the department of mechanical engineering and bio-mechanical engineering at the University of Texas testified that this risk of harm is unacceptable, as did a widely recognized expert on burns, the editor in chief of the leading scholarly publication in the specialty, the Journal of Burn Care and Rehabilitation;
5. McDonald’s admitted that it has known about the risk of serious burns from its scalding hot coffee for more than 10 years -- the risk was brought to its attention through numerous other claims and suits, to no avail;
6. From 1982 to 1992, McDonald’s coffee burned more than 700 people, many receiving severe burns to the genital area, perineum, inner thighs, and buttocks;
7. Not only men and women, but also children and infants, have been burned byMcDonald’s scalding hot coffee, in some instances due to inadvertent spillage byMcDonald’s employees;
8. At least one woman had coffee dropped in her lap through the service window, causing third-degree burns to her inner thighs and other sensitive areas, which resulted in disability for years;
9. Witnesses for McDonald’s admitted in court that consumers are unaware of the
   extent of the risk of serious burns from spilled coffee served at McDonald’s
   required temperature;
10. McDonald’s admitted that it did not warn customers of the nature and extent of
    this risk and could offer no explanation as to why it did not;
11. McDonald’s witnesses testified that it did not intend to turn down the heat -- As
    one witness put it: “No, there is no current plan to change the procedure that
    we’re using in that regard right now;”
12. McDonald’s admitted that its coffee is “not fit for consumption” when sold
    because it causes severe scalds if spilled or drunk;
13. Liebeck’s treating physician testified that her injury was one of the worst scald
    burns he had ever seen.

Moreover, the Shriner’s Burn Institute in Cincinnati had published warnings to the franchise food industry that its members were unnecessarily causing serious scald burns by serving beverages above 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

In refusing to grant a new trial in the case, Judge Robert Scott called McDonald’s behavior “callous.”   Moreover, “the day after the verdict, the news media documented that coffee at the McDonald’s in Albuquerque [where Liebeck was burned] is now sold at 158 degrees.  This will cause third-degree burns in about 60 seconds, rather than in two to seven seconds [so that], the margin of safety has been increased as a direct consequence of this verdict.”²

Irresponsible use of anecdotal cases by “tort reform” proponents is nothing new. The case of Charles Bigbee was the “McDonald’s coffee case” of the 1980s. Ronald Reagan described Bigbee’s case in a 1986 speech as follows: “In California, a man was using a public telephone booth to place a call. An alleged drunk driver careened down the street, lost control of his car, and crashed into a phone booth. Now, it’s no surprise that the injured man sued. But you might be startled to hear whom he sued: the telephone company and associated firms!” In fact, Bigbee’s leg was severed after a car hit the phone booth in which he had been trapped. The door jammed after he saw the car coming ‚ he tried to flee but could not. The accident left him unable to walk, severely depressed and unable to work. Because the phone company had placed the booth near a known hazardous intersection, and because the door was defective, keeping him trapped inside, he sued the phone company for compensation.³ Bigbee was brought to Congress to testify. He said, “I believe it would be very helpful if I could talk briefly about my case and show how it has been distorted not only by the President, but by the media as well. That is probably the best way to show that people who are injured due to the fault of others should be justly compensated for the damages they have to live with the rest of their lives.”⁴ Charles Bigbee died in 1994 at age 52.

NOTES
¹ Morgan, The Recorder, Sept. 30, 1994.
² Ibid.
³ Nader & Smith, No Contest: Corporate Lawyers and the Perversion of Justice in America (1996).
⁴ House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, July 23, 1986.

Reprinted with permission of  the Center for Justice & Democracy

By Keegan Federal

Most people know that a freshly poured cup of coffee is, or should be, hot.  Children learn early in their development that if you touch something hot, you will get burned.  So, without considering the true facts of the McDonald’s coffee case (Liebeck v McDonald’s), the public was quick to conclude that the risk that 79 year-old Stella Liebeck took, by putting a Styrofoam cup of hot coffee between her legs, was her own and the spill was her own fault.  Without all the facts, it is easy to see why the general public would find the case so emblematic of “frivolous lawsuits”.

But when you consider the risk Stella actually took, as opposed to the risk she thought she was taking by putting that particular cup of “hot” coffee between her legs, the picture changes.
 
Stella surely understood that she was taking a risk that she might spill the coffee, and certainly she could feel that the cup was “hot” and consequently knew that she was taking the risk that she might spill “hot” coffee on herself, and that it might hurt a bit.  But most, if not all of us, have similarly put “hot” drinks between our legs before, and we knew we were risking a spill and possibly even a burn.  However, most would agree that we and Stella were willing to risk getting only a slight burn, and none of us, including Stella, would knowingly risk a scalding, third-degree burn.  Feeling the cup is “hot” doesn’t inform us of just how hot the contents actually are, and we would naturally assume that the coffee is “normally” hot, not excessively hot, i.e., so hot as to cause a third-degree burn.

But the type of burn that Stella received wasn’t slight; it was severe; and it was precisely the temperature which caused the severe burns, not the spilling alone; and so the issue becomes who had actual knowledge of the potential danger posed by selling coffee at such an excessively high temperature? McDonald’s knew full well that the temperature of its coffee had been causing severe scalding burns throughout the country, but had refused to reduce the temperature.  Stella had no such knowledge, and no reason to believe that the coffee was so excessively hot that if she spilled it, she would not only be burned but also scalded to the extent that she would need skin grafts.  Stella did not realize and could not foresee that the coffee was not just “hot” but that it was scalding hot, and I believe that is why McDonald’s was correctly held liable for knowingly causing injury which it had foreseen.

As to why the public has pointed to that case to justify tort reform, lawyer jokes, and worse: it’s because the true and complete story was not included in the media reports of the case.  Perhaps it simply wasn’t “newsworthy” to report that a corporation had knowingly caused injury to a consumer (that happens every day).  Reporters knew that the story would get widespread acclaim if it was somehow shocking and could make it shocking by reporting only the incident and not the facts - ”lady wins millions by spilling hot coffee on herself”.  The media reports didn’t mention McDonald’s prior knowledge of injuries, or the excessive temperature of the coffee, or McDonald’s refusal to reduce the excessive temperature, or the severe burns, hospitalization, and skin grafts Stella endured, or that Stella originally sought recovery for only her medical expenses; and so on.

It has been my experience that when folks hear “the rest of the story”, especially the part about how McDonald’s had been on notice for some years that its coffee was causing scalding burns around the country but that they refused to reduce the temperature, as well as the full extent of Stella’s injuries, then they understand and even agree with the verdict.  In fact, most folks then conclude that she didn’t get nearly enough in compensation.