EP 87: The McDonald's Hot Coffee Case

This week on Hashtag History, we are discussing Liebeck vs. McDonald’s Restaurants, more commonly known as the McDonald’s Hot Coffee Case. In 1992, a seventy-nine-year old woman named Stella Liebeck bought a cup of coffee from a McDonald’s drive thru in Albuquerque, New Mexico. While in her car, she spilled the coffee in her lap and suffered severe burns. She took this matter to court and would be awarded close to $3 million dollars. When the story first came out, the general public was told the Liebeck was lawsuit-happy; if someone can get nearly $3 million dollars for spilling coffee on themselves - coffee that she had to have known was hot - while she was driving and not paying attention, that just goes to show that now anyone can sue anyone for anything! In fact, we nowadays give away a Stella Awards (named after Stella Liebeck) for each year’s most frivolous, ridiculous lawsuits.

Over the course of this episode though, we will learn that nearly every single one of those - quote unquote - “facts” of the case were, in fact, false. Nearly every detail you think you know about this case is about to get debunked.

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- Rachel and Leah