The Truth About the McDonald's Coffee Lawsuit | Adam Ruins Everything

our justice system is way less impartial than we like to think Adam I'm serious Kendra's freedom is on the line please stop scaring her no I knew it the system is going to screw me they throw innocent people in jail while some old lady who spills hot coffee on herself gets a million bucks ah yes the famous McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit that case was terrible but not for the reason you think in fact everything you've heard about it is wrong huh tell me what do you think happened in that case so there was this greedy lady and she was all I don't want money my ethics are questionable so she gets a coffee and McDonald's but she's like I'm too dumb to know that coffee is hot and she's driving all crazy and she spills a little on the left ah then she's all like hello I'm suing McDonald's I deserved money for being stupid and now she's a millionaire and probably owns the Clippers or whatever woof sorry all of that is wrong the facts the outcome and especially that voice hey a strong choice is better than no choice at all here's what actually happened Stella Liebeck was a 79 year old woman whose grandson drove her to McDonald's she was in a parked car holding hot coffee in her lap when it spilled now Stella openly admitted that the spill was her mistake but the results were horrifying she had third-degree burns on her legs and genitals and she went into shock she had to undergo painful skin graft operations and her surgeon said it was one of the worst cases he had ever seen Stella was permanently disfigured and nearly died third-degree burns how is it possible no one serves coffee that hot you're right only a clown would the reason Stella's injuries were so severe is that McDonald's was serving coffee at up to a hundred and ninety degrees that's almost boiling McDonald's themselves even admitted that at that temperature their coffee was a hazard in fact in the decade prior over 700 people notified McDonald's that they had been burned by their coffee we chrome the real irony is Stella didn't even want to go to court she just wanted McDonald's to help pay her twenty thousand dollars in out-of-pocket medical expenses but after making her wait for six months they only offered her eight hundred bucks Stella tried to get McDonald's to settle she even agreed to mediation but McDonald's wouldn't budge they gave her no choice but to go to court so when the jury heard Stella's story they found the McDonald's had acted so irresponsibly they had to be punished they burned 700 people this has got to stop let's find them two days Coffee sells its 2.7 million that ought to teach them a lesson it does robble robble and it worked in the end Stella settled for less than six hundred grand but that was enough to get McDonald's to lower their temperature and stop burning people this was an incredibly rare case where a working-class victim actually beats a huge team of corporate lawyers and made the world a better place Wow how do I not know about this because those corporate lawyers are really good at their jobs they spent years running a disinformation campaign to convince Americans that there was an epidemic of frivolous lawsuits and the media bought it it seems she was holding a cup between her legs while driving now she claims she broke her nose on the sneeze got at the sizzler bending over looking at the chickpeas you give me one coffee drinker on that jury you gonna walk out of there a rich man Jesus getting smaller spill a cup of coffee make a man down and because of this false narrative the witch-hunt against frivolous lawsuits continues to this day coffee's hot wow they're really mad except that that anger is not real these protests have been organized and sponsored by large corporations Kendra this is Michael McCann he's a professor of law and politics at the University of Washington and a co-author of distorting the law Hendra last several decades large corporations afraid of being sued for making unsafe products created Frank groups like citizens against lawsuit abuse try and turn public opinion against lawsuits this included companies like Pfizer and Texaco big tobacco companies like Philip Morris Philip Morris yeah and by spreading this false story they got everyone to believe that silly lawsuits were rampant and nothing could be further from the truth the best social science evidence shows that the number of personal injury lawsuits in recent decades has declined and the median payout is only $55,000 oh they smell the money I better get out of here bye thanks Michael these mother Falcon companies dragged an old lady through the mud so that we wouldn't be able to sue them anymore yeah this story is insane McDonald's had a policy that almost killed someone and it took Stella's lawsuit to change it she should be considered a hero but because of these companies we treat her like a punchline okay are you two done talking about civil court cases because Kendra's case is in Criminal Court it's a completely different system one that I happen to know quite a bit about she has a great case and the jury's gonna be very responsive to it oh there are a ton of problems with jury trials if you do another act I swear to go sorry it's happening we'll be right back hey guys Adam here if you like that be sure to watch new episodes of Adam ruins everything every Tuesday at 10:00 on truTV

Channel: CollegeHumor

Views: 8,675,439

Rating: 4.9187918 out of 5

Keywords: Collegehumor, CH originals, comedy, sketch comedy, internet, humor, funny, sketch, coffee, law suit, behind the scenes, mcdonalds

Id: Q9DXSCpcz9E

Length: 5min 41sec (341 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 14 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/dammitkarissa]

Simon Whistler did this 8 months ago, if anyone's curious.

[u/Insouciant101]

John Oliver can learn a thing or two from Adam's show. I'm a big Johnny-O fan, but the abrupt "HBO language" and random pop-culture references stray away from the shows main point. At the end of the day, both shows leave the audience informed.

[u/nickmista]

Did she say "I swear to goal"?

[u/point_of_you]

There is a very good documentary about this case,

Hot Coffee - came out in 2011, highly recommended!

[u/dirkson]

Ok, I'll be the dissenting voice here. This video was horribly done, and contained one outright lie:

Namely, McDonald's did not adjust their coffee temperature after this lawsuit. Also, the article that Adam cites for this fact does not state that McDonald's lowered their temperature. This claim was entirely fabricated.

Coffee is generally served at 175F-190F at almost every location that serves coffee. I have made coffee at home as a test, and freshly made coffee came out at 190F for me. I actually burned myself as I was fiddling around the thermometer. 180F is simply a normal temperature to serve coffee.

But let's assume, for a moment, that McDonald's was selling coffee at too high a temperature. Perhaps 150F is more reasonable - Most people would call this cup of coffee 'tepid', and no coffee brewing organization serves or recommends coffee to be served at such a low temperature. Would this lower temperature have prevented Ms. Liebeck's injuries? Absolutely not. Water at 150F will cause third degree burns within two seconds of contact, and Ms. Liebeck's sweatpants kept the liquid in contact with her skin for far longer than that.

The details of this case are horrific, and Ms. Liebeck's injuries were both shocking and regrettable. But her injuries were the simple result of normal temperature coffee trapped against the skin, and McDonald's did nothing wrong or out of the ordinary that contributed to them. McDonald's is not at fault here - Hot liquids are just far more dangerous than we think of them as.

And just in case you think I'm some McDonald's apologist - I sincerely hate this company, and haven't eaten a thing from them in at least 15 years. Their food is bland and their business practices questionable at best. I'd love to see them go belly up, and I really can't fault the jury for wanting to see some of McDonalds' money go to someone who needed some cash, even if don't agree that McDonald's really did anything wrong in the first place.

TL;DR: McDonalds continues to serve coffee at normal temperatures, despite what this clip claimed. Please be careful with hot beverages, they're really frickin' dangerous.

[u/tinktinkdotorg]

This reminds me of Good Eats with Alton Brown

[u/theballsdeeper]

Is this from the full Adam Ruins Everything show? Is Rhea Butcher regularly on it?

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[u/Lost4468]

I thought this was going to be about the san andreas hot coffee mod first.