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Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants

Background

In early 1992, Stella Liebeck and her grandson went to a McDonald’s drive-through
and ordered coffee. While the car was parked, she spilled it all over her lap and groin while
holding the cup between her knees, as the car did not have any cupholders. She was
immediately brought to the emergency room for shock and third-degree burns. At the time of
the incident, she was seventy-nine years old, and the injury caused her to become
temporarily disabled for the next two years (The New York Times, 2013). The case gained
widespread notoriety as it was constantly misreported and sensationalized on television,
leaving out actual details of the incident in the narrative. It instead depicted Liebeck as
someone who staged the accident to get rich, especially since McDonald’s was a large
multinational corporation (HBO, 2011).

Gross Negligence

When the trial began in 1994, evidence was brought up indicating that McDonald’s
knew how hot they were serving coffees at their franchises. The operation manual stated
that franchisees must prepare their coffee at a temperature between 82°C to 88°C (Gerlin,
1994). Still, the lawyer representing McDonald’s argued that they were simply following what
was supposedly standard for food businesses back then. However, there had been about
seven hundred similar cases of hot coffee burns documented at various McDonald’s
restaurants dating back as early as 1983. These incidents had been quietly settled out-of-
court for a cumulative total of 500,000 US dollars. Coffee continued to be served at high
temperatures, as these incidents were treated as one-off issues. But at the same time, it
could be said that the fact they were documented meant that McDonald’s was aware of the
risks their coffees pose to the consumer, yet these did not sway McDonald’s into revisiting
their guidelines.

According to their Quality Assurance Manager at the time, Liebeck’s injury was an
isolated incident out of the millions of cups of coffees they serve. He responded that while it
was good that there were not that many similar incidents of hot coffee burns, they were not
liable for it as it was Liebeck herself who spilled it. However, he also admitted even he would
not drink coffee at that temperature because it could cause burns to the throat (Consumer
Attorneys of California, 2014). It seemed ironic because on a personal level, he was not
comfortable with the idea of drinking scalding coffee. And yet, corporate protocol dictates
that their establishments should always serve it at a high temperature to customers. This
indicated that the potential risk for injury caused by hot coffee, despite advisories from health
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groups, was considered insignificant in comparison to the opportunity to sell more cups of
coffee in the morning.
Consumer Safety & Health
McDonald’s policy on corporate social responsibility was not as apparent back then
when it came to customer health, despite serving millions of customers each day. It was the
early 1990s, and this was also the time when customers were being encouraged to
supersize their meals for a small upcharge. They were marketed for being aggressively
priced, and the link between fast-food and obesity had yet to receive heavy scrutiny (NBC
Universal, 2004). As such, it was unsurprising that McDonald’s took a lax approach as well
towards other aspects of their menu items like coffee. Consumer coffee machines could only
brew coffee up to 65°C, but McDonald’s brewed their coffee at a significantly higher
temperature (HBO, 2013). At that temperature, severe burns could develop in a matter of
seconds like what had happened with Stella Liebeck. While McDonald’s defended that there
was already a warning label on their cups, the court criticized how it was not readily visible
especially to the elderly. One could hold the cup and feel that it has hot coffee, but not
necessarily tell how much hotter it is in reality because of the cup’s insulating effect.
Customers should not have to carry a thermometer around or rely on guessing to know
whether their coffee has become safe enough to consume. And should they accidentally spill
it, the coffee should not pose bodily harm to them, but it did to Liebeck and hundreds of
customers before her. It was their responsibility as a fast-food chain to minimize any
immediate risks to the customer, but they failed to do so.
McDonald’s general inaction towards the number of recorded hot coffee incidents
and dismissiveness towards Liebeck’s case seemed utilitarian to an extent. As mentioned
earlier, McDonald’s Quality Assurance Manager saw these cases as a miniscule percentage
of their customer base. There simply was not enough number of people affected by coffee
burns to warrant a review of their policies, hence no additional preventive action was taken.
It seemed more favorable in their perspective to have more customers experience drinking
their coffee than to spend on long-term safety measures. When an incident did occur, they
quietly settled it with the affected customer before proceeding with business as usual.
This hush-hush practice only stopped with Liebeck’s landmark 1994 lawsuit against
McDonald’s. They had dealt with these prior incidents separately as they occurred,
suggesting did not have the strongest sense of justice towards the customer. Liebeck’s
family was only offered eight hundred US dollars for compensation by McDonald’s at first,
and it was barely enough her hospital bills despite the severity of her injuries (Consumer
Attorneys of California, 2014). It was trivialized as though it was one of the usual coffee
incidents McDonald’s had in the past. The manager’s televised response on Liebeck’s
incident came off as sounding unconcerned and uninvolved as well, rather than
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understanding towards her. It followed pre-conventional thinking rather than a post-

conventional one. He simply approached the case using company protocol as it was laid out
and did not attempt to go beyond that. Even if he admitted his hesitancy to consume his
company’s own coffee because of how hot it was, he saw it as a purely personal thing rather
than something that could apply to everyone else, like their customers.

Impact on McDonald’s
Considering that there had been quite a number of reported coffee burns already
before Liebeck’s family sued McDonald’s, the judge saw enough reason to rule that the fast-
food chain was acting unethically when it came to consumer safety. They continued serving
coffee at a dangerously high temperature despite fully knowing the health risks that came
with it. It was done intentionally, especially since it was implemented as standard practice
throughout their restaurants.
Hence, McDonald’s was held primarily accountable for the resulting injuries Liebeck
had. Even after losing the case, McDonald’s never directly addressed it or its implications to
the public. This did not mean that internal changes did not occur, however. McDonald’s
quietly changed company policy on coffee preparation (The New York Times, 2013), but it
was not necessarily a significant change in any means. Coffees now must be prepared
about 6°C lower than they were back then, but this is still quite a way off from the
recommended temperature for intake. Reducing the temperature would give more time for
the customer to react if the coffee was spilled, meaning there would have been a greater
chance of incurring burns that are much less severe. The cups were made more rigid as well
and came with a bigger warning label. It was updated to be more prominent to avoid the
possibility of a lawsuit as highly publicized as Liebeck’s from happening to McDonald’s again
in the future. The original warning could be easily missed, and the small font size was not
necessarily accessible for everyone. People with considerable visual impairment and
children were particularly vulnerable to this.

Aftermath
Although the court set punitive damages at 2.9 million US dollars (Gerlin, 1994),
McDonald’s eventually paid out a disclosed sum to Liebeck and her family for her injuries
and medical bills. Still, it was much more than the initial eight hundred dollars McDonald’s
offered to her family at first to silence the issue. Yet despite this, almost all the settlement
went to paying for medical care for the rest of her remaining life, as the severe burns and
shock left her considerably incapacitated. Stella Liebeck died in 2004 at the age of ninety-
one, having never fully recovered from the incident, and the subsequent negative attention
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she received on the television and the public. Hot coffee lawsuits still popped up from time to
time, but none of them ever became as publicized and scrutinized as Stella Liebeck’s.
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References
Consumer Attorneys of California. (2014, August 3). The McDonald’s Hot Coffee Case.
https://www.caoc.org/?pg=facts
Gerlin, A. (1994, September 1). A Matter of Degree: How a Jury Decided that a Coffee Spill
is Worth $2.9 Million. The Wall Street Journal.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150923195353/http://www.business.txstate.edu/users/d
s26/Business%20Law%202361/Misc/McDonalds%20coffee.pdf
HBO. (2011, June 27). Hot Coffee [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=psebm9RJDvU
NBC Universal. (2004, March 3). McDonald’s phasing out Supersize fries, drinks. NBC
News. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4433307
The New York Times. (2013, October 21). Woman Burned by McDonald’s Hot Coffee, Then
the News Media | Retro Report | The New York Times [Video]. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCkL9UlmCOE&t=115s