Be interesting to hear more about what it takes for the average American to take on big companies in court. Seems it rarely is worth the time and expense.
McDonald's coffee is so frustratingly hot. It stays way too hot for way too long. It doesn't make the coffee taste good to have it burn the shit out of my tongue for the first 20 minutes that I have it.
The worst part of the "Aunt from hell" situation is that the media acted like they were defending the little boy, but they were the only part of the situation that actually harmed him as had to watch the entire country mock his beloved Aunt because of something he set into motion. Could you imagine if when you were 8 you accidentally injured somebody you loved with your entire heart as a direct result of the injury they started getting harrassed by the entire country? that is emotionally scarring.
American media harassing a family and putting an innocent individual in the worst possible light so they can get some clicks and ad views for their terrible dying business model? Say it ain't so.
I'm glad you covered the old woman who was screwed by McDonalds. They really went out of their way to make her out to be an idiot and she was just a sweet old lady who was seriously injured.
They should have gotten additional fines for that. Doesn't this count as libel? Just imagine a room full of super rich CEOs sitting around a table after the fact, stewing angrily over having to pay an old woman pocket change for her medical bills, because they had decided that no matter how many people got hurt, that coffee had to be able to melt metal. They had the option to be gracious and apologetic, but no! Let's pull that old lady through the muck in the hopes that people would be to scared to sue them in the future.
Yeah good on her, it forced them to make things safer. It was going to happen sooner or later that someone would get hurt. 2.5 million isn't a lot to Maccys
the hot coffee case is really sad tbh. i listened to a podcast called unsavoury about food and law that covered it. she pretty much died alone. her family claimed she was so embarrassed and got so much backlash and humiliation from the media she hated leaving her house and essentially became a shut in after the case and leading up to her death.
I honestly wished her family sued the radio host for defamation of character for mocking her. He was the catalyst. It’s very very sad to hear what happened. She deserved every penny
Where were they? I mean, an 80+ year old who has gone through this traumatic experience might well need some emotional support. If something like this happened to my mom, me and my three cats would be on the road ASAP, so I could be there as long as necessary.
the mcdonald’s lawsuits portrayal by the media will never cease to enrage me, they called her some greedy karen when she actually just wanted her medical bill paid
Which is a testament of how crappy is the healthcare system in the US, but doesn't change the fact it was a ridiculous lawsuit. Almost everywhere else, she would have received immediate treatment at no cost and as such she would have no beef with McDonalds for making hot coffee hot, recognized it was her own fault for been careless and move on with her life, while everyone else would get their coffee hot as they wanted. And any further legal proceeding would have been dismissed as frivolous. To this day, I randomly find coffee shops around the world making fun of this lawsuit by putting witty comments in their coffee cups.
@@mikejunior211 you regularly get third degree burns from drinking your coffee??? No??? Then it's not as hot. It's not that a hot coffee was "hot" it was literally hot enough to burn through several layers of skin, probably far enough to reach muscle tissue. Imagine that happening in your mouth. McDonald's was aware of the problem but did nothing until this lawsuit MADE them change the temperature of their coffee. Regular warning labels would be "caution: may be hot" while the warning for this coffee should've been "caution: may melt your skin off " The fact that McDonald's suffered no bad press from this case is a travesty.
Of course they do. It's the people with money that are able to portray them as such. Insurance companies and corporations have a vested interest in these incidents being portrayed as frivolous. If people sue, they lose money.
We talk about the McDonald's coffee lawsuit every year in my physics class when we do thermodynamics. Every year, without fail, the kids have been surprised when they found out what actually had happened and how hot the coffee actually was.
@@Doeyhead Then don't order coffee. Corporations have to ensure the safety of their customers, and not selling your coffee at near boiling temperatures to save on cost is one of those safety measures.
@@TheAlmightyJello I'm sorry but I just think that is so silly. I know so many people who would prefer their coffee hot. And some teas dont even steep correctly if they arent brewed at 212. It was a frivolous lawsuit.
@@Doeyhead "You know its stupid that trains have a speed limit of 60mph when they can easily go over a hundred. I know so many people who would like to get to their destination faster." Thats what you sound like. Safety needs to be a priority over hot coffee. Corporations dont care about you. They would sooner kill you than give up easy money.
The coffee lady wasn't negligent at all. People spill things all the time and don't get their skin melted off. Why? The same reason nobody else sold coffee 20 degrees from boiling. I'd always heard it was so hot it caused the cup it was in to collapse and that caused the spill. Even if she dumped it, I think there's a reasonable assumption that something handed to you through a window into a car won't cause burns similar to napalm.
You have got to be kidding. I wouldn't drink a hot drink in a moving car under any circumstances. It is self-evidently dangerous. To stick the cup between her legs is even more breathtakingly stupid.
@@gnranger OK, I obviously wasn't paying proper attention at that point and that does make it seem less irresponsible but I'd still never put something obviously dangerous next to my favourite body part.
@@esobelisk3110 It obviously is. Everyone in the UK is taught that hot drinks are dangerous from a young age. I've asked numerous friends whether they would ever put a fresh hot drink between their thighs and they've all looked at me like I was mad even to ask such a question. I would absolutely expect a fresh cup of coffee to cause terrible burns if poured on skin. Why wouldn't it - it's made from water that's boiling or almost boiling. It wouldn't be more obviously dangerous if it were battery acid.
Fun fact, the McDonald's coffee lawsuit is also why most cars now have cup holders. Manufacturers realized that if the car she was in had cup holders, her cup would have been in one and therefore not spilled. Fearing a lawsuit against them because of this, they started putting cupholders in all their cars, not just the higher trim levels.
@@xuavrice2338 She wouldn't have been able to list a car manufacturer as responsible for not providing cup holders, a non standard accessory at the time. Even if it was a standard accessory that wasn't in her grandson's car, her not having one wasn't why a cup of coffee caused major burns. No matter how it spilled on skin it was still hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns in 15 seconds.
Here’s another one I found: a guy sued McDonalds over emotional distress for only getting one napkin with his meal. Dumb right? Except no, the issue was that when he asked for more napkins, they started racially harassing him.
Back when I worked in the food service industry, I had a customer spill a cup of hot coffee on her toddler. It soaked his whole Tshirt. The coffee we brewed was not hot enough to cause burns, the child was crying and in pain, but suffered no permanent injuries. If Stella leibeck hadn’t sued McDonald’s, that coffee probably would’ve been hot enough to disfigure the child. She’s saved countless lives from permanent injury over the years and helped make work conditions safer for food service workers.
When i was a kid i had like half a cup of coffee spilled on my arm at a McDonald's, i was fine but if not for Steila Leiback my right arm would have probably been permanently disfigured
@@HiddenRealm in the video around 2:25 he shows McDonald's company records that show that McDonald's had over 700 complaints of people being burned. this was not a one location, one time scenario
YOu don't know what "resisting arrest" means. "Resisting arrest" is when you are informed you are being place under arrest and you try to phyisically prevent the officers from doing so.
My ex-husband was a public defender and anytime the police do anything that could get them in trouble, they always arrest the person for resisting arrest -- because they have to arrest them for something. Because if they physical force and don't arrest them for anything, it looks really bad. And resisting arrest just means they weren't cooperating with the police so it's easy to argue that when there is no evidence of committing an actual crime.
@@Aeivious the simplest way to not have conflict is to just go with it. The charges will be dropped if they have nothing on you and struggling just makes them tougher on you.
A news outlet phrasing "Black Man gets wrongfully accused of crime and arrested under excessive force - sues for punitive damage" as "Man sues for 1.2 million because he stole his own car" is intentionally malicious, and frankly should (Note: SHOULD, not saying it does, not a lawyer) constitute defamation
Both titles would be pathetic since you felt the need to add, "black" too it. I'm tired of everyone constantly attempting to emotionally manipulate readers from the first line. And before you say anything, I'm a black male myself.
right, I didnt realise that it was impossible to do without dogpiling on him and kneeing him. Of course he was "resisting arrest" he wasnt even charged with a fking crime. For all he knew he was being harrassed by a bunch of drunk blokes who managed to get their hands on some uniforms.
And most Fox News presenters, from Megyn Kelly to Tucker "Karen" Carlson, should have been made to pay millions for all the individuals they've smeared over the years, just because it suited their politics.
@@GC-qe8vc Fox should be legally barred from using the word "news" in their name. The majority of their content consists of opinions, not facts, and they've said so in court.
@@andyb1653 that's literally every major news outlet. Did you forget the child that was slandered by CNN and MSNBC because he smiled at a native American? The kid did nothing wrong and he was doxxed and slandered.
@@nocthemedic2951 No. My calling out Fox doesn't mean I give CNN a free pass at all. I'm just saying that Fox is the worst of the bunch. Has been for years. (edit: amongst the major "news" networks, that is. There ARE some that are even worse **cough** OANN, TYT **cough** )
@@andyb1653 fair. I made an unfair assumption. Generally people like to call out one news organization while completely ignoring the others while the truth is that they all suck
For the McDonald's lawsuit, I remember my dad warning me about how hot McDonald's drinks could be and I need to be careful about when drinking it rather than ridiculing the lawsuit.
when I finally learned the truth about that lawsuit a few years ago from some random article I was shocked and it changed my perspective on so many things. that lady was turned into a punchline by the media. 😑
Around that time I had breakfast and coffee at McDonalds. Even tho I waited for coffee to cool while I ate breakfast I still burnt my mouth badly on first sip.
This reminds me of the time my insurance company hired an arbitration law firm because they wanted me to sue my service dog. I was out walking him when I fell and hit my head on a brick wall, resulting in a concussion. I'd explained to the ER staff at one point that my dog had gotten distracted by something and didn't properly alert. He was still VERY young / very new, despite being trained, and even the best trained dogs aren't 100% all of the time. I don't know what the ER wrote down, but my insurance had a lawfirm contact me by mail and tell me that they knew someone else was at fault, and the insurance wouldn't cover my ER expenses unless I sued the responsible party. I informed them that there was no one else involved, it was just me. They wrote back that the doctors at the hospital had said that my medical assistant had been negligent, resulting in my fall. I had to actually get on the phone speak with someone and asked them if they really wanted me to sue my dog. They briefly entertained the idea of having me sue the organization that trained my dog, but eventually decided against it. This took a full year! A full year where my insurance company wanted me to sue my dog for damages.
I worked in Insurance (in Germany, but it seems like they are all the same) and I totally believe that. If there is a way to save money, they will find it. Great story, thanks for sharing
*Insurance company wanted to sue your dogs insurance company Something to ponder: if insurance companies operated in a way that paid out more in claims than they collected from their customers, they would be out of business quickly
Just as a general rule, if a lawsuit looks patently stupid and silly and foolish in the reporting? Look deeper, there's probably something legit about it. Not always, of course, but often enough that its worth giving them the benefit of the doubt, especially if they're suit is against a massive corporation.
Right, if a lawsuit goes nowhere, that doesn't mean much. Anyone can sue for whatever they want. But if a large judgment is awarded, there is probably a reason a jury of 12 people decided that was reasonable, and why the judge allowed it. Maybe in some cases it's due to poorly-written or unreasonably punitive laws (e.g. a $2 million judgment for illegally downloading 24 songs), but in most cases it's because the news didn't give you all the information.
Ex of one that is ridiculous: Nunes suing the twitter account of a parodist. Usually, if it's somebody in power filing a seemingly frivolous lawsuit, it's probably actually frivolous. If it's somebody without power filing the lawsuit, it's probably legitimate. Our justice system sucks and the powerful love to abuse it.
Bro in india this goes way too far. When sanjay Datt was wrongly said ti be a terrorist, when you watch his real story it makes you wanna kill the reporters. He was charged with illegal hold of weapons but the report written was about him being a terrorist. 😬
I lived in abq during this and oh boy everyone had the wrong idea. As a kid we all knew about it and we got the thoughts from our parents who were all tricked.
As someone who has actually worked at McDonalds, I found that no matter how hot we ever got the coffee, people would come up and whine about it not being hot enough. We even tried sticking it in a microwave for a minute just to deal with one particularly obstinate person who wouldn't believe it was freshly-brewed because "freshly brewed coffee should be hot!" even though it was hot enough to actually blister skin BEFORE we did that and I was legit afraid it would melt the cup if we got it any hotter(We were still using the foam coffee cups at the time). I'd swear coffee drinkers could drink actual lava and complain that it's "not hot enough"
Used to have this all the time with milky coffees like lattes where I used to work. People boil water at home and pour it over instant coffee, then assume a shot of espresso topped with steamed milk should be a comparable temperature.
Breathe a sigh of relief on me: although I *never* go to McDonald's for _anything,_ I brew my Coffee at home at *155 F.* 1 TBSP of coffee grounds, put in the filter in the drip system, pour 8 ounces or so. The point is, we don't all demand to drink Molten Lava. ... And yes, the flavor's tolerable. It seems less acidic, and I mostly buy Aldi Organic Coffee, if you want to be specific.
Glad you picked this: the coffee story circulated even in German schools and was used as an example how crazy U.S. law can be. some 20+ years later I stand corrected and am now fully informed, thank you.
It is crazy, but it is crazy because their healthcare system is screwed up. The woman is however not crazy for suing, that is how the US law system is and how it's used to pay for medical expenses.
You left out the part about why they brewed the coffee at such an extreme temperature. They did it to maximize the amount of coffee per bean. Apparently the hotter you brew it the more coffee you can produce. So they didn't just ignore a danger to their customers they knowingly created the danger and likely calculated that the cost of settling lawsuits was less than the additional profits made by brewing the coffee at the hottest temp possible. Super shady stuff. I think they got off pretty damn lightly. No doubt their marketing department had something to do with the negative public opinion against that little old lady.
Go to any place where they actually drink coffee (not the stuff from the US) and ask the what the proper brewing temp is. Depending on the method of brewing it has to high for the right aroma to get out! Probably MCDonalds did it for money. But it's not their fault that people are idiots! Using that logic you should sue every oven manufacturer, because if you take out anything you put in it at high temps will burn your skin off in seconds! In the US you might even win!
coffee should be brewed at 195-205 F to get the right taste. I brew mine at 202 every morning. the issue isn't that they brewed it so hot, it's that they held it at that temperature and proceeded to serve it at that temperature. if you brew it that hot it needs to cool before being served - it's not like it's actually drinkable when it's that hot so not sure why you would even serve it
The brewing temperature makes perfect sense. The SERVING temperature is the issue. The reason they served it that hot is due to sit-in customers. They wanted to make it so that the customer would have to wait before being able to drink the coffee. This reduces the chance of the customer being able to get a free refill. The calculation wasn’t lawsuit settlements vs coffee brewed. It was lawsuit settlements vs free refills.
@@isaacevilman7586 Yep you guys are both right i got the details mixed up. I still suspect the way this story was handled by the media was manipulated by McDonald's. But that's almost to be expected I guess.
I think it's because health insurance companies won't pay if there's someone else they can blame. In 1993, my son was 5. He was playing at his friend's house across the street when the boy swung a stick and accidentally hit my son's hand. It blew open his finger and ripped the entire nail off. We drove to the hospital and they sewed it all back together. Everything went back to normal but then my insurance company sued my neighbor for reimbursement. I had to deal with a lot of red tape and LIE to my health insurance company, telling them that the injury happened on my property so they couldn't sue my neighbor. It made the last 3 years we lived there uncomfortably tense, because our neighbors didn't understand that I wasn't suing them, and that my health insurance company was doing it against my will and outside of my control. That business practice should be illegal, imo.
@@michiganmaxedout6248 Just an FYI, be careful about telling that story. State law varies, but in my state, any misleading statement involving life or disability (health) [that's how it is legally referred to, not my wording] insurance does not have a statute of limitations. If the insurer discovers you willfully lied to them, they can and likely will sue you. It's normally used if people do not disclose preexisting conditions, but may or may not be pertinent here. Source, licensed insurance agent.
Having good health insurance would make life so much easier and more secure for most Americans. As well as universal insurance for liability. In Europe, most people have both. Really makes a difference.
I thought of that right away as well. It makes me wonder, in countries where the state universally covers medical bills, does the government use the legal process to recover damages? Something analogous to the state lawsuits against tobacco companies that happened through the 1990's.
Not exactly a lawsuit, but it was a civil court case: I remember this one article posted to social media where the headline claimed that a man lost custody of his son for refusing to feed him junk food. Because it was posted to social media, there were a lot of comments before you actually click on the link and it was clear that many people formed an opinion and commented without reading the article. They were all outraged and backing the man who lost custody. After I read the first two or three paragraphs, the writer finally explained the real reason why the man lost custody. The father was supposed to take his toddler son on an outing that was to be supervised by someone appointed by the court to see how he was with the child. The son wanted to stop for McDonalds and the father said no. No problem there. But when the child started crying, the dad lost his cool and immediately turned around, drove back, gave the child back to the mother and took off rather than deal with a crying child. He had options for dealing with the tantrum other than giving the kid fast food, but he chose the one where he just gives up being a dad. He literally decided he didn't want to be a parent and showed that he trusted the mom to handle it better, so the court just agreed with him.
I worked at a McDonald's in 1996, just before McDonald's corporate had finished changing their coffee makers in response to the coffee lawsuit, and I can tell you that those old coffee makers were highly dangerous for everyone. The water temperature was so hot that both employees and customers often scalded themselves (minorly, thankfully) when dealing with the coffee. I remember at least two people I worked with absolutely refusing to touch the coffee maker because they had been burnt by it. I think everyone was thankful when corporate finally replaced that insidious machine with traditional coffee carafes.
even now, they still serve coffee at a way higher temp than necessary. i worked at mcdonalds last year and had to go home to treat first degree burns from a pretty small spill on my wrist, and the coffee wasn’t even that freshly brewed (for comparison i now work at starbucks and if i spill FRESH drip coffee it barely leaves a mark, it’s just slightly red and stings for a few minutes)
Back in the 80's when I worked at McDonalds out of high school, I suffered from burns from that stupid coffee pot more times than I care to count! The ONE time I had to go to the doctor because the burn was pretty severe, my manager literally asked me, "how hard is it NOT to spill coffee on yourself?". I told him it wouldn't be a problem if the coffee wasn't hot enough to boil a potato.
Whats scary is that earlier i saw a person who claimed to own a coffee shop who was dying on the hill that the McDonald's lawsuit was frivolous even after watching the video. Makes me never wanna drink coffee at any place other than in my home again lmao
@@swimsvg1855 This is truly sad... I shouldn't suffer second degree buns when I accidently spill coffee on my self! Boiling water, yes, but coffee?? I STILL have the scar on my hand where this happened (at 20ish) and I'm now 57.
A friend of mine studied this case in college and also found that McDonald's not only knew the coffee was too hot, but did a study to show that the hotter the coffee was, the more they sold and that the profits outweighed the cost of lawsuits and settlements, which is another reason they lost this case.
@@davidfaustino4476 You're telling me people want their coffee to be so hot it causes the styrofoam cup to deform and literally melt through skin? The problem with the general public is that we tend to ignore facts and generalize things. 140 F is hot. 200 F is also hot. However the difference between both of them is that one of them literally melts your skin. Even though they're both "hot" there's a difference
It's funny how it's the person suing that gets the hate, when they are suing large corporations....corporations who often couldn't care less about individual customers. Like is it worth defending these companies?
Corporations often act to make the person suing look bad because it protects their interests. McDonald's can keep on selling their volcanic java with no problems as long as they convince people that's normal.
After watching “Hot Coffee”, I’ve run around for years saying, “no no, shut the hell up about that because you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about because the media mislead all of us on that and the elderly woman this revolved around almost died of shock”. And it surprises me a lot that a bunch of people still don’t know the truth and keep telling the media’s story.
Maybe from a legal standpoint the coffee was too hot to be served at... but from a scientific standpoint that lawsuit was still ridiculous I think. Water (or in this case coffee) can only exist at sea level as a liquid when it is under 100 degrees C. Most coffeemakers (even the one in your home) brew it at this temperature, you can even hear the one way valve flutter from the boiling as you brew it. Any freshly brewed coffee would have done the same thing given the same volume unless it was deliberately cooled one way or another after brewing. If anything this video illustrates a different point, how in 16 minutes a lawyer can convince most people that it isn't a ridiculous lawsuit. Same sort of burns would have happened with any freshly brewed coffee in that volume on an old lady's skin directly in her lap. Or any freshly boiled water for that matter.
@@14arma it’s not necessarily about the temperature, what it is about is the principle that we were mislead on the issue for me. Passenger seat of a parked vehicle? And do you also remember how flimsy those old cups were? Maybe the coffee itself isn’t the issue, but keeping the customer safe from it very well should be.
@@tylertucker9460 I think its a difference of opinion at that point, I think if anything the lawyer is trying to mislead as I understand anything hot enough to burn me should be treated with care and I'm assuming others would know that as well. There are plenty of things in this world that are sold or rented out that have a much higher probability of accident with much more severe consequences when mishandled, cars are rented out every day to people with no experience driving that model, guns are sold to people with no shooting experience, some drinks at bars are served to people while on fire. I think it boils down to the level of freedom vs security people are comfortable with and you value the security a little bit more than I value the freedom. The lawyers are right when it comes to the legal view of it as they get paid to convince people in situations that are convincible (like this one), but I'm looking at this from a medical and scientific standpoint and don't think the injuries were any worse than what you should expect if you spill a cup full of boiling water on your lap, and the coffee was not significantly more hot than any other freshly brewed coffee, as it would be impossible for the coffee to be any hotter than boiling temperatures without being in a gas form.
@@14arma I mean, you’re not wrong in any of this, really. Opinion could really be what this is coming down to. I do value freedom as well as security, and I think there’s a line to be walked with it. I suppose what I really think about is the flimsy styrofoam cup that busted in her lap while putting sugar and cream into while in the passenger seat in a spot, and everyone thinks, “she spilled it on herself while driving,” and all that, you know? We’re certainly allowed to form opinions with the facts we’re presented with, and the people without those facts have a very misinformed opinion. There are a few things that upset me about the case in general, and that comes from my personal lens, just as yours comes from your own. You do bring a VERY good point in the handling of things with inherent risk. I sincerely hope I’m not coming off as an asshole when I say this has actually been an interestingly civil debate that ends with an agreement to disagree which doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should. I thank you for being respectful and hope that I have adequately provided respect in return.
I remember one assignment I got in school was about the McDonalds Coffee Cup lawsuit, and about how much McDonalds put into smearing her in the public eye. It was basically about how corporations can use advertisements and media campaigns, and how they may warp public perceptions.
People still believe Stella was just a clumsy, greedy old woman…when I tell people Mcdonald’s only offered $800 to cover her 20k medical bills, which is what she wanted, I always ask…so now who’s the greedy one?
The case left her hands really early on. It was mainly the fight where her insurance company raged for more money because insurance companies are generally scam-level businesses who hate paying anything and McDonald's had an army of lawyers worth billions that were paid more than what McDonald's was ever willing to pay those who sue. Stella was, directly and indirectly, demonized by both for their mutual greed.
Uh... stella. If I ignore all safety warnings and stick my hand in a woodchipper, why would Woodchipper inc. pay a dime for the harm _I did to myself?_ She held a disposable coffee cup in an unsafe manner while wearing clothes which increased the harm its contents could cause.
thank you for educating people on the liebeck case, i'm allways horrified when i notice how many people still believe that nonesense about this poor old lady just being greedy. The best documented case of mass manipulation that i know about. It worked so well that at some point the lie spread by itself like the myth about mew under the truck.
Mew under the truck is real though, kind of. There's a glitch called item underflow that can be used to manipulate all sorts of things so it's actually possible to make the truck push-able and have Mew appear when you push it (there was a GDQ speedrun years ago that showed it off, may have been a TAS, not sure).
I had heard the actual facts of the "aunt from hell" case. from my understanding , the family even encouraged her to sue, because if she won they could get their homeowners insurance to cover it. since no one would reasonably assume an 8 year old could pay that kind of money.
What he didn't mention about the McDonald's case is that the burns were so severe, her labia were fused together. She ended up having over five separate surgeries. All she wanted out of the case was for McDonalds to pay her medical bills and instead, they ruined her life.
She ruined her life when she spilled hot coffee on herself due to her own stupidity and to bad it didn’t kill her so I wouldn’t have to hear about this stupid situation
Something people also forget is just how badly designed McDonalds coffee lids and cups used to be. You use to have to tear the plastic along a perforated line to open the lid. With the cups then made of cheap styrofoam it was very easy to spill.
this mcdonalds specifically was notorious for making their coffee too hot. they burned tons of people prior to her claim. it was actually an absurd temperature that they were serving their coffee at.
@@TheStevieb1983 In one of the larger cases, the coffee actually melted the cup. Without anyone trying to open it or mishandle it, the cup itself melted from the heat of the coffee. Absurd.
The fact that the old woman simply wanted her medical bills covered which McDonald's refused in such a ridiculous way also really makes me happy that they had to pay a lot more in the end.
My oldest sister sued me after a car accident because my insurance was being unreasonable and would not cover her medical bills and yes it was technically my fault as I ran the light. I did join in on a class action lawsuit as my accident was not the first in that intersection and two of the accidents had been fatal because of how the traffic light had been placed on a blind corner in front of the intersection. To this dat my sister and I get along just fine and support what she had to do
@@pastajensen She did not have to sue at all. He was working and had her own insurance. She was looking for someone else to pay her bills because she was greedy and cheap.
Homeowners insurance, if it includes bodily injury, is for things like, if someone trips on your stairs because of negligent upkeep. If she'd tripped in a hole on the lawn, that might have been considered 'justified'. The thing I don't get about that one though is if it really happened like is said, there was no negligence on the part of the person holding the homeowner's insurance so there should have been no case. Unless the claim is that the parents, who hold the policy, not the child, didn't keep their kid from tackling her. So, essentially, she still thought something the homeowner had done / not done was at fault. If my 70 pound dog jumps up on my mom and knocks her down causing injury, that's my fault. She'd still not likely to sue me to have her medical expenses covered though.
@@chriskay1449 Nope, not the case. she needed theirs because that's what insurance told her. And her sibling was more than okay with that, because they spoke about it.
"Scalding hot" coffee doesn't adequately describe the situation. The coffee was almost BOILING. the few times I bought Mc Donald's coffee it took an hour before it was cool enough to drink. McDonald's deliberately and negligently sold coffee hot way beyond reason. Why? Because it was more profitable.
@@wolfram4234 I might be wrong but it has to do with them not having to re-heat the coffee every hour and so, so they let it be boiling hot and then let it stand like that. Again I might be wrong on the reason but it's something like this which I think basically saved them a really small amount.
@@wolfram4234 One reason is at the time they offered free refills on coffee. By keeping it too hot they severely reduced the actual number of free refills they would have to give out because few people would be lingering long enough to wait for one cup to cool, drink it, then repeat.
@@wolfram4234 In blue collar industries like where I work people prefer the McDonalds coffee. If its overheated, then it will remain hot longer while on a jobsite or a warehouse. Even in the office people prefer it because they can sip on it for at least a few hours.
@@OlneyYouthMinister When you put it that way, I can get the appeal, but I do think it needs be said that being within 30F or so of boiling is pretty extreme. They could easily dial that back a fair bit and still achieve nearly the same effect. It definitely seems reasonable to keep it at a temperature such that it doesn't pose a risk of causing, apparently, severely disfiguring burns. Not to say it needs to be incapable of leaving burns, I mean, if you spill a hot drink that's on you, but, more like a "You grazed a stove" burn and not a... well, "Nearly boiling water poured on you" burn.
What’s depressing to me is that the motivation for every single one of these lawsuits is paying medical bills. The healthcare in the United States is an absolute abomination.
@@cottoncandiez8872 oh we care about it, we just can't afford it because hospitals and pharmacy companies can jack up the price as high as they want. I have food allergies and haven't had an Epipen in over a decade because whoever owns the patent for it raised the price by several hundred dollars. I have to be hyper aware of all the ingredients of whatever food I'm eating because i could go into anaphylactic shock if i eat the wrong thing. And you never know if someone will decide to substitute almond milk for dairy milk in a recipe to make it "Healthier" so if i don't know who made something at a get together and there isn't an ingredient list...i don't eat. And unfortunately for me, other Americans find the idea of universal healthcare as appalling as murder. More appalling than murder, in some cases. Yeah, America is insane, please send help
@@AskMia411 So, what what I get from this is that if people had their medical bills paid by the government, corporations would be off the hook because no one would sue for medical bills, and their dirty corporate practices that injure people would continue?
@@maryannecba3889 No, people could and should still sue corporations for negligence and damages. If a company is doing something that's harmful, to customers, to employees, they should face repercussions. Where in my comment did i insinuate that companies shouldn't be held accountable??? I feel like that's a given. As another comment i made on this video states: "Your safety regulations are written in blood." Meaning that if something is listed as a regulation, no matter how obvious or arbitrary, it's there because a company used the loophole of "Well, it isn't ILLEGAL to do this harmful thing, and it saves us money, let's do it! Who cares about the consequences for anyone else!" If anything, my point was that there need to be more regulations enforced on medical care/production in regards to price, but even then, if a company knowingly does damage it should suffer consequences.
I’m a law student in Austria and I sent this video to my legal english professor cause we‘re currently discussing compensation culture. Today we watched it in class and most people said they will be subscribing to your channel. Thank you so much for your videos!
The most ridiculous thing by moral standard is you have to sue against someone just to let that insurance company even have a look at if you are able to receive the compensation. All those companies always find a way to be disgusting while obeying the law.
Yes, it’s ridiculous that homeowners insurance and her own health insurance refused to cover it. If I were her, I would have fought the homeowners insurance company since she was clearly injured on their property through no fault of her own.
@@TheMrawesomest - But only medical expenses. You sue the insured, to activate their liability insurance. Liability, not just for bodily injury, but also property damage. Still need the insurance to cover that. Most states require auto insurance, but the most expensive part is the liability portion. That means if you get in a car wreck, the liability insurance does NOT pay for your cars damage, but the other parties damage, if you were found to be at fault.
I remember watching the documentary about it. All she wanted was about $80K for the medical bills. It was the grand jury that upped it to one million. The media sensationalized it and made her look like a golddigger
now, i aint saying she a gold digga, but she aint messing with no wait time for the skin grafts she needed to survive the damage caused by the insanely dangerous product she was served
Minor point but a petit jury more commonly known as a trial jury increased the award. A grand jury is used in criminal cases to decide if charges will be brought against a party or not.
Bro, the fact that McDonald's coffee was served hot enough to permanently disfigure someone that spilt it on themselves is completely outrageous. I've spilled fresh hot coffee right from the coffee maker on my hands before and they barely turned pink. No drink needs to be that hot.
I spilled hot tea from McDonald's on my thigh 8 years ago when I was 12. I had a large second-degree burn that left a mark for a year. I couldn't wear pants for a few days. What didn't happen was permanent injury that required medical attention and surgery. It's utterly absurd to think that spilling some coffee naturally means you'll need immediate medical attention.
Fun fact: A news reporter who made fun of the coffee lawsuit ( I forgot where, but they're local news) had to leave work for literally a week because she burned her hands with McDonald's coffee on her way to work.
We spent a day on the McDonald's case in a business law class I took. The professor took a poll to see which side we were on before he revealed anything about the case, and 100% of the class sided with McDonald's. He took the same poll throughout class as we learned more and more about the case, and people starting switching over to support the plaintiff. By the end, once we learned all the details, 100% of the class sided with the victim and agreed that this case was totally legitimate.
Sounds like your class was full of morons. Or you made this story up. Assuming it's true, they're confusing the act that led to the suit with the damages of the action. If we were to swap out a few elements, say a knife from a kitchen store and the lady putting the knife between her legs and cutting herself, I doubt you'd have the same reaction. And I don't think you'd be talking about how the "knife was too sharp" and that's what led to the issue. The action that led to the suit was the mishandling of the item itself. The amount of damage is irrelevant to that finding. And putting a hot coffee between your legs is just plain stupid and reckless.
@@zoruamaster2495 No, civil case law did not side with the plaintiff. An uninformed jury did. And a bunch of law students and a biased professor also doesn't make a good argument from authority. (If there is a good one).
The other issue is that when left to its devices, the US Federal Congress is unwilling to really regulate against corporate interests. A lot of our regulations are as a result of precedents set by lawsuits e.g. Many modern safety standards usually have an American legal case as a catalyst somewhere in their story.
@@stephenjenkins7971 No it wouldn't, the whole point was Walter was unable to pay for his Chemo through his insurance and that's why he sought to cook. It's after that he had enough money he started thinking about making more so his family could live comfortably.
tbh the thing that shocks me about the mcdonalds coffee case is just how hot the coffee is. im an ex-barista and i’ve touched our steaming wand accidentally, touched the very hot bits of the espresso machine, and even then we had a notoriously hot boiling water tap, never so much as a 2nd degree burn. if anything, that woman is great for only asking for essentially the bare minimum in settlement and not doing it selfishly.
@@YACABE So they made her place the coffee in a bad spot and took the actions to cause the spill? If that case was legit all places need a IQ test for service.
@@Tomgd420 It was their fault for selling an unsafe product without warning. A fun fact the lawyer left out is not only had the woman received third degree burns, the coffee was so hot it MELTED HER LIGAMENT. Personally I don't think anyone should be selling food so hot it melts your body parts after one wrong move. Imagine if a child had tried to grab their parents coffee and it melted and burned their face, or if the woman hadn't recieved help soon enough and had been left disabled. You can't just sell an unsafe product and blame the consumer when it injures them. Yes, it was her fault she spilt the coffee, but everything else was the fault of McDonalds.
Hot coffee is a great documentary and also reveals how corporations exaggerate “frivolous” lawsuits to create support for tort “reform” even though filing a lawsuit is the only recourse for an individual to hold a corporation accountable.
"Sir, people keep suing us when our product murders their children. Perhaps we should fix the code so that human children cannot be targeted by the 'seek and destroy' subroutine?" "Perhaps... but that might be expensive. Instead let's make it illegal for us to be held accountable for our actions."
Tort reform is an agenda pursued by big businesses so that their bottom lines aren't affected by judgements against them while still screwing over the public at large
@@Shacko14 Exactly! They want to be able to do anything and have zero consequences. They should be held accountable for their actions, just like anyone. Doing it behind the "corporate veil" shouldn't exempt them. Edit: Okay in some cases we do actually need individual humans to be legally distinct from the actions of the corporation they work for. The concept of the corporate veil is generally a good thing. But when a single person or specific group of people direct the corporation to do things that are "wrong," in whatever sense of the word "wrong" you want to apply, then those people should be held personally accountable for the actions of the corporation that they direct. It's only when someone does not have the ability to direct the actions of a corporation that they should not be held accountable, in the same way we don't hold anyone accountable for things they can't control.
This is some tinfoil hat shit right here lol. Not uncommon for UA-cam comments sections. "Frivolous lawsuits" really do happen, like what happened with Homicide Digital v. Jim Sterling, and following that, Homicide Digital v. Steam users who criticized their games. It's just in the cases presented in this video, they were portrayed wrongfully by the media as "frivolous lawsuits".
I have had talks with soooo many people that still to this day believe the McD Coffee suit was ridiculous and frivolous. Have to link sooo many videos that actually break down just WHAT McD did and what they did wrong even to the point of them running an outright SMEAR campaign against the old lady using millions on TV adds.
Back in the days before the hot coffee lawsuit, one of my friends spilled her coffee on me after having had it for about ten minutes from McDonalds. This resulted in first degree burns across my arm. This was after ten minutes on young, firm forearm skin. Just imagine what fresh out of the pot coffee at those temperatures would do to elderly, thin, GROIN skin.
I've noticed that it seems a lot of these "stupid lawsuits" start with misleading headlines. Has there ever been such a thing as 'journalistic integrity' or is that just a myth?
There was a relatively brief time during the post WWII era where journalism came fairly close to 'integrity' overall, but other than that, it has always been a mixed bag, and one of the problems is that a lot of the people that were alive during that era still cling to the false notion that you don't have to be skeptical of what is reported. Especially today, we've reverted to another age of yellow journalism, where the most sensational headline 'wins'. Doesn't mean that it's all lies or 'fake news' as a certain idiot liked to go on about, merely that you have to use your own damned sense and try to read between the lines.
They aren't misleading. They are just lies. In the 3rd case, he did not win 1.25M for stealing his own car. That is not misleading, that is incorrect. That is no more true than saying "guy gets 1.25M because he stepped out of a car."
Novelty headline draws people to read their content. like clickbait. in the end of the day, it works, and you get viewership... in the 90s, viewership meant more sales, thus more profits.
@@RiotforPeacePlz She was indeed silly for putting something hot between her thighs, but it shouldn't be so hot it caused the cup to deform and cause burns so horrific her skin literally melted. It was so hot her skin tissue fused together and she had to undergo surgery to fix it. If you're a child at a playground and play on the swings, of course there's a chance you might fall and injure yourself. But if the floor were full of spikes and you almost killed yourself playing on it, then most of the blame wouldn't be on you would it? It's a stupid analogy but the notion that she is 100% to blame is even stupider
Most of this to me shows how rough the USA's healthcare system is. Most of these cases were just trying to get medical bills covered for injuries that weren't their fault. If medical bills weren't so ludicrously high then most of these cases wouldn't have needed to be brought to court. These people not only have to deal with life-changing injuries but then having to go through the courts process for months; and on top of that unfair scrutiny from the media and public.
Exactly. Also it’s not just medical bills being high, it’s the whole system that sucks. I wonder why republicans are acting like every single thing that helps people who don’t have millions is socialism when it isn’t…
I just don't agree with the 2nd paragraph of your statement. If there were free healthcare in the US, it wouldn't mean that the cases shouldn't be brought to court. It would just mean the offender, like McDonald's, wouldn't have to pay for hospital fees. I would still sue McDonald's for serving a coffee at 180° F, which burned me, even if I didn't have to pay from my own pocket for the medical bill.
Three little words: National Health Service. You need one. We need to defend ours from certain politicians trying to sell it off piecemeal to their crooked mates.
I know that people are talking about the hot coffee lawsuit, as they should be, but could we just take a bit of time to focus on how horrifying that clip at 9:20 is? He literally had an entire group of people kicking him on the ground and they STILL managed to turn the story against him. If we didn't have that dashcam footage I'm terrified of what would have become of his career...
Without the dashcam or anyone else recording he would've been tried as a criminal and reputation ruined. His career might not have ever happened. That's why cops also need to have bodycams on 24/7 while on duty just in case there's no one else recording
Whenever we hear about these "ridiculous lawsuits" against large corporations and believe them, we are swallowing pro-corporate propaganda whole cloth. We need to be better.
Some are truly frivolous (and often get tossed out as a result). Really people just need to be more attentive about looking deeper into the facts when a headline seems unbelievable.
The McDonald's coffee cup case being characterised as frivolous would be like calling the case where a woman had acid poured on her chips instead of salt "woman wins $250k for unsalted chips"
Couldn’t like fast enough. The McDonald’s “Hot Coffee” lawsuit was so lambasted by smear campaigns that I have to continuously re-educate people who use it as an example of frivolous lawsuits.
I would not be surprised if i learned mcdonals spent more on making sure everyone thought that the woman was being ridiculous than they did paying the combined costs of all hot coffee lawsuits and settlements. When breaking the law is cheaper, that is what companies will do.
"re educate" she put a hot beverage between her legs. Might aswell sue the car manufacturer for not including cup holders. That's a lawsuit that can only fly in the US. The rest of the world will rightfully tell her and the hundreds of other people who do such a stupid thing that they did something stupid.
@@noneofyourbusiness4294 her argument wasn’t that McDonald’s caused her to spill her coffee on herself, it was that the coffee was being served at an unsafe temperature.
Or they knowingly sold a product at a much higher temperature than the industry average and that temperature was at the point where it could cause 3rd degree burns…
I’ve always hated how people who don’t even know the full details joke, bully and criticize people who decide to speak out or take a stand like that, so easily disregarding their pain.
"Let execs have their money because when you're rich someday you won't want people taking your money" I'm never gonna have that kind of money in my life and neither are you. The biggest parlor trick the rich ever pulled was convincing poor people that other poor people are the problem
That's because they're not told the full story and just casually beleive what the media outlet tells them. And when big money starts making an agressive PR campaign in their favor. It becomes an uphill battle to get the true circumstances of the event out.
What McDonald's did to that poor old lady and the coffee temperature being served was absolutely horrendous, but what the media did to her was absolutely disgusting.
You mean what that lady did to herself. Using your very flawed logic, that's like suing a restaurant for giving you hot soup that you asked, then burned your tongue on. She could've asked for warm coffee, which Mcdonalds did/does. Her handling of the entire situation was ridiculous.
@@vandalg282 Since you clearly don't know anything about the case, the lady didn't even want to sue, she just wanted her hospital bills covered because clearly the water was too hot if it can melt your damn skin
Pay attention, I know everything about the case since I've done a breakdown on my own channel. Learn some law for free; she could've said no.....she didn't. Now move on.
@@vandalg282 Oh wow, you also made a video covering one of the most popular cases in US history? Wow, that definitely makes your incredibly ridiculous and logically void opinion the end all be all. My mistake Mr. Professional UA-camr
As I recall, the real reason that McDonalds was found negligent (in addition to the dozens of other burn cases that they paid settlements on) was that they had made a corporate decision to serve the coffee at an outrageously hot temperature because they found that it reduced the number of refills people got, thus saving them money for second or third servings of coffee.
Because people had to wait an hour for it to cool down. I don't understand the popularity of McDonald's, I've had better fast food at similar prices from every other fast food chain.
Good for Dr. Crosby. Being a victim of police brutality is never a good thing but he bounced back great, sued the city (get your money king), and became a doctor. What a legend
The "she's crazy and careless" angle on the McDonald's lawsuit was all the work of their PR department, but she actually had a valid case. It's practically gained urban legend status.
McDonald’s Customer*: *horrifically scalds her own legs* FTFY. To be fair, I think the company had a fair portion of the fault, but just twenty percent for the litigant? It seems an open-shut 50/50 whereupon the remaining 30% was established to afford higher compensatory damages than might be justified had she not been an injured old woman adding emotive appeal to a jury versus a company whose figurehead is a literal nightmare-fuel clown.
@@TheAmbush101 If it was the only case of this happening I would agree with you, but given the fact that there where previous accounts of this and MCD didn't change anything, I feel like this judgements is just.
I actually had a high school law class that talked about this case and the teacher mocked this case HEAVILY and even said that the correct answer was that she gets nothing because of her own negligence in spilling the coffee ignoring the fact that normal coffee isnt supposed to make someone partially disabled for 2 years 😅😅
@@TheAmbush101 It was very much in McDonald's interest to subtly bad mouth the case and minimise the true nature of the case - and the media, (led by, oh what a surprise, the right wing), happily went along with it...fortunately the court heard the full evidence and went down the right track...
Regarding the Crosby story: Cop often shout "stop resisting" when beating someone who is not resisting. They do so to give the impression person is resisting in case witnesses are around. The presumption is that they would not be yelling this in the case of someone who is not resisting. They yell this regardless.
Nah, usually the people resisting are screaming "I'm not resisting!" despite fighting back against the police, tensing up and refusing to lie on the ground and take their hands behind the back to be cuffed. This is called resisting btw.
When my brother was in law school, we were at a family dinner and my dad starts talking about "the lady who sued McDonald's because her coffee was *too hot* " and how people file ridiculous lawsuits and make companies put silly warning labels on products. My brother then explained what ACTUALLY happened to the lady, who got seriously scalded (haven't watched the video yet, don't remember exact details) and had to go to the hospital for severe burns. He detailed what McDonald's did wrong, and why she was right to sue. It was one of the coolest conversations I'd ever seen, and it changed the way i thought about laws, lawsuits, and warning labels (good name for a band, btw)
@@pridelander06 surprisingly, yes, for that one case at least. He probably didn't change the mindset that made him assume the lady was a freeloader. Can't win em all!
The fact that multi billion dollar companies or the president can besmirch your reputation permanently because of misleading legal cases is genuinely infuriating
I think the one that bothers me the most is the suing the kid, cause it's just so easy to use the just as sensational headline "state law forces aunt to sue kid to receive treatment from insurance company" or something like that, folks punch up not down!
@@courtney-ray Eh, it's a valid point. These headlines could've supported the actual victims in these situations, but the writers were too busy agreeing with conservatives who decided to focus on how the victim was to blame. - "McDonalds' Coffee Causes 3rd Degree Burns" becomes "Woman Spills Coffee On Herself." - "Police Assault Black Man And Arrest Under False Pretenses" becomes "Man Steals His Own Car." - "Connecticut Law Forces Aunt To Sue 8 Year Old To Claim Insurance" becomes "AuntieChrist Sues Child." These stories could've inspired more positive change and raised awareness to the shit going on in this country if those in the media had done anything but victim-blame.
@@tracyblanchard7663 I think OP's point was specifically that what *actually* happened could have led to an equally sensationalist headline as the ones they ran, but they still chose to misrepresent the case and harm everyone involved.
Not really, even if all her medical bills were covered by her own insurance she still had time off work, had her life made harder for a few months and deserved compensation for that as the injury was caused by someone else's negligence. It's not even state law really, in pretty much all of Europe nobody can sue an insurance company (unless it's yours) because there is no contract between the parties. The insurance company is there to indemnify the policy holder against the policy terms. So you have to sue the policy holder whose insurance company will then take over the case and sort it on their behalf. I knew a chap at university who sued his own father after being in a car accident while the father was driving. There was no animosity between the two and the father encouraged his son to bring the case knowing he had insurance cover.
a woman got into an accident and a pedestrian saved her by giving her CPR. She sued her saviour for breaking her ribcage when giving her CPR and demanded compensation. Real story: she wanted to claim insurance money to pay her medical bill but just like the Aunt had to name and sue her newphew. she also had to sue her saviour to claim insurance money. she did it out of formality. there was no bad blood or greed.
Imagine almost dying in a horrific accident due to the negligence of multiple parties, losing a limb and all around having your life forever changed... ..and then the president of the united states goes on air to basically just shit talk you to the nation.
@@Jacob-zk1jy Not as many as you'd think though. the left hates him for obvious reasons, the right hates him for similar reasons (Including racial tendencies like disarming the black population) as well as skyrocketing the price of NFA items. He sucked...
as a former McD employee, we actually had to talk about this case during orientation. And why McD was at fault, and the steps they took to improve. basically, the coffee was made too hot for human consumption on the ideology that ppl waiting till they were at work/home to drink so by then the coffee would have cooled to a point of acceptable temp to drink while still being hot. Basically the temp was above scalding hot. they since lowered the temp and added the label.
So if I want to drink the coffee right then and there or on my way to work, I'd just burn my lips off? 🤔 Another person said it reduces the number of refills customers request. I think that answer sounds more like it.
@@TomikaKelly How you get refill from the drive through, which was where most sales for coffee took place? What Aza Dalamiq said is correct. McDonald's made assumptions about customer behavior without bothering to check whether the assumption was true.
@@beeaggro2593 I mean would they admit they did it mainly for profits even though we know it alreadt? I think the guys who said McD did that to discourage refills and to keep coffee for longer periods of time had a point.
It's not, US police brutality is way more brutal. The latest fad is to ask a black guy to show his driver's license and then shoot him when "he reached for the gun".
I watched the documentary about the McDonald's coffee case, 'Hot Coffee' and I felt soooo bad for the victim as well as angry about the lies from the media that manipulated me since I was a child. This was an elderly woman, given boiling hot coffee, THROUGH A DRIVE-THRU (who was then mocked for it for the rest of her life), and the injuries I saw were beyond horrific. I can't imagine how excruciating it was for her to experience not only the injury itself, but the subsequent treatments. 😢
The McDonald's case not only reduced the danger of too hot coffee but resulted in the new coffee lids which are much safer as well. No doubt that lawsuit saved a huge amount of pain and suffering.
It's a shame that someone had to suffer for that to happen. They could have served coffee at lower temperatures and used safer lids from the start. Reminds me of the aviation industry because it's really sad to think that some of the advanced safety features modern planes have were only added after an accident occured. But i understand the engineers can't think of everything.
@@_invencible_ If you've ever watched "Seconds From Disaster," you learn a good majority of our safety procedures are because the worst scenario happened.
Yeah or regulations in general are made because people have done some really stupid things. Like some sign may say "Don't do X" and most people reading the sign would think it's obvious not to do it, however, at some point someone did it to cut down on costs and people got injured or killed.
@@_invencible_ The reason they brewed it so hot was to make it cheaper for them. The hotter water makes the coffee stronger, so they could use less beans per pot. Greed was part of this suit, but the greed was 100% McDonald’s.
@@rendajones7368 i'm tired of hearing that. They could brew it as hot as they wanted but they had to wait for it to cool down before serving. It's not rocket science
It’s not just the healthcare though, people still sue (though, granted, just not as often) in countries with universal healthcare because loss of earnings is also a massive issue.
I can't help but notice how many of these cases involve medical bills that the victim couldn't afford. Let's face it. The reason we see so many "weird" lawsuits in America has less to do with the American legal system and more to do with the American healthcare system.
We need to band together for the destruction of the health insurance industry and to sew the pockets up of hospital business people who decide what the charge master reads.
As someone who also got third degree burns across my entire lap (from boiling water while making tea as a teenager), i’ve always had a lot of sympathy for the McDonald’s coffee lady.
From that radio snippet: "Every day we hear about ridiculous lawsuits" Yes, that might be because you make them sound ridiculous to turn them into spicier stories. If they gotta be dishonest, they could at least be self aware about it. A lot of this crap comes up in trademark law, where we often hear about stupid trademark lawsuits because trademark law requires the owners to be very protective
the entire right-wing media premise: "every day you hear about ___. true, it is because we tell you about it, and we are lying. but still, someone should probably do something about it"
If you think conservatives are going to be honest, I don't know what to tell you. There's a pile of half a million corpses from last year they're still lying about. We watched them let thousands of people die preventable deaths, and all they did during that time was selectively deny respirators and ppe to blue states. They're monsters, plain and simple, and they always have been.
So al these “frivolous” lawsuits come from people needing to sue to cover their medical bills? This explains why we don’t hear or see as much of these in other countries where everyone has a (mandated) basic health insurance?
Ah yes because obviously health insurance is going to stop the police from arresting you for no reason and fix 3rd degree burns that permanently damaged your body.
@@laartwork does that make my comment wrong? Regardless of your health insurance you would still sue the company if you got permanently crippled. You should be applauding yourself for cherry picking.
@@laartwork well while that lady only sued to medical bills, a different personality type would have sued for the permanent damage done. She also stated she wanted them to reduce how hot their coffee was so nobody else got burned so bad
This is a good breakdown of why those cases weren't frivolous, but also, if the cost of being able to hold large corporations accountable is a few frivolous suits, I won't love any sleep over it.
Universal healthcare isn't the miracle everyone thinks it is. It definitely shouldn't be as expensive as it is but it being free leads to longer wait times for all medical treatments including life saving procedures where ppl often die waiting, less medical supplies and medication, less healthcare professionals in all fields, etc.
So, I went through Crew Trainer and Manager training at McDonald's, and they actually teach you about the hot coffee case. They specifically teach you that McDonald's was unambiguously in the wrong and how to avoid causing trouble like that again.
Not just the company. Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh who favor shielding corporations from liability both had and still have a field day with her. I'm sure if you ask someone like Ben Shapiro or Tucker Carlson you'll hear the same screed about the "greedy old geezer who burned herself with coffee" today.
For the McDonalds case: I have met people who, after being met with the facts, still struggle to find her at fault, stating that "she could have lied" (even after the 700+ reports of McDonalds settling similar cases) and that she wasn't that burned (suggesting she had a surgeon perform a needless operation, even though it would have cost the surgeon's license).... Kinda sad really
The facts are pretty clear, I don't know why people try to argue about them. Tort law is very complex and you can have a lot of debating on how to decide responsibility for an accident. There's no simple rule there so it's always complicated. You very rarely have someone who is clearly 100% wrong (at least it rarely goes to trial).
People just don't like the idea that they were being bandwagoning idiots on some poor women based on misinformation and ignorance, so to smother the guilt they go into denial even though its nonsensical
How could anyone believe such nonsense. She is so elderly an operation would be super dangerous. She actually died a few years later because she was never the same after the accident.
There is research showing that once a person establishes a viewpoint, it's very difficult to change. They did a study telling people some BS facts, then 5 minutes later they said, "That was all wrong, made up, those aren't the real facts." Then they give them a test, and people still believe the BS facts!! Even just knowing something for just 5 minutes, people have a VERY hard time changing their minds. Imagine how hard it is to change beliefs they've had for a lifetime.
I live in germany and The McDonalds coffe accident was in our news too. Like always the information given to us was not complete - we only knew that the "crazy" americans can sue companies for everything and that a person got burned with a cup of coffee and that McDonalds was sued for an amount of some million dollars. Because of all that missing info my take on it was that the person was drinking the coffee and got burned in the throat. Thank you very much for all that missing information.
I was going to make a comment along those lines. If the public opinion is misinformed about the case in the US, you can only guess how we are handled the news in other countries. Being in France at the time, i heard the same thing. I remember one of the urban legend of the time was that some American put a cat in the microwave and sued after the death of the cat.
one of the worst things about this countries media is the constant headline culture we have here, not wanting to show the full story and always trying to portray things in ridiculous manners or absurdist terms. The truth is that sometimes the media and its sensationalization of modern America creates negative stereotypes that other countries judge us and our citizens by
I‘m from Germany, too, and that „crazy Americans“ angle was the only thing I ever heard in the media. When my dad told me that the coffee was so hot that it burned her legs up, I had a hard time believing it, because why would the mainstream news not include this? But, that’s my dad, always interested in details. On the other hand, „burnt up legs“ isn’t even close to the reality, so I wonder how much detail he was actually able to find out… It sounds horrible enough with that description, but hearing all the details is a real-life horror story. Man, Americans did us such a disservice by inventing the 24/7/365 news cycle. What the heck were you THINKING?
The last case (where the woman sued her nephew) reminds me of another one that I heard of on some podcast: a big-rig truck driver hit a car and killed the child. Clearly the truck driver's fault, parents tried to move on. Two year later the truck driver had to sue the parents because of some insurance mess, because otherwise he couldn't get the assistance he needed for the PTSD. It was horrible all around.
"Had to" There were no other choices? Couldn't sue the insurance company? Couldn't take a long walk down a short pier? Seriously? At the point where you've already victimized someone in the most severe way to than think your psychological wellness outweighs that of your victims' is straight-up sociopathic. Demanding your victims pay for the supposed "psychological pain" of YOU having victimized THEM. There's just no excuse for that.
@@SpaceBearEngineer > Couldn't take a long walk down a short pier? Lovely person you are too, telling people to off themselves in preference to seeking healthcare. Yikes.
@@SpaceBearEngineer That's not cool. The guy shouldn't have tried to sue the family of the parents of the child he killed. Honestly if anything, that would probably only make that guilt worse and doesn't paint a good picture of him to say the least. But still, that's a horrible thing to say about someone and I hope you reconsider your take there. Edit: it might be another case of having to sue the person who injured him bc it's illegal to sue the insurance company. Still not great.
Reminds me of one that hit me. Big Econoline van speeding around a blind corner. I was in the wrong because I had a stop sign, even though he was speeding and not visible in time. T-boned me from the passenger side. I was injured by the passenger side door folding over the seat and slamming into me in the driver's side. I had a concussion and at the scene of the wreck I was unable to move my legs. His kid had slid out of the seatbelt and cut his lip when his teeth hit the dash (kid was young enough he should have been sitting in the back seat). He and the kid were otherwise fine. A year later, I get a notice I'm being sued because he couldn't perform in bed for his wife anymore.
When I was in 7th grade I had some complications with a duct. I had a stent put in me. It almost bankrupted my family. Took 6 years to get paid off. I can not stress how broken our healthcare system is in the US
For those who don't know why the officer yelled, "Stop resisting!", the answer is simple: It's a way to cover their ass. If they yell "Stop resisting!", they can claim that you fought back, which is how he was charged. It is an unfortunately common practice and it one that works on far too many observers and commentators.
Fortunately it's much harder for cops to get away with nowadays since there are cameras everywhere including bodycams on cops, this case is proof of that, without cameras he would have been screwed.
Its also likely that most people are involuntarily resisting. You get thrown to the ground, your instinct is to put your hands out. If police are holding them, you are going to pull away to catch yourself. Its also very hard to relax you muscles when your arms are being wrenched backwards. Then add on all the psychology of cops not explaining themselves in many instances, just grabbing on your and tossing you around after verballing abusing you...
@@RPostWVU Right, exactly. They wrench your arm in an uncomfortable position where it feels like it's about to pop out of its socket (and probably is), you involuntarily move to prevent this, and you're "resisting."
I feel like a lot of those cases didn't even happen if the USA had a decent healthcare system... Also thank you so much for talking about the McDonald's case, it annoys me so much when people bring it up as something ridiculously dumb without knowing any context.
Wait, the phone company who negligently placed a phone booth in a known dangerous spot with a broken door, didn't pay anything?? But the race track who served alcohol did? That's seems messed up.
Even the original headline didn't seem that absurd to me. If the phone booth was defective and didn't allow him to escape, of course there is culpability and negligence from the phone company.
Imagine if the store selling booze was sued every time someone was stupid enough to drive drunk! Or if the pharma company got sued every time someone got in a car on pills they shouldn't drive on. That is just absurd, haha.
When I was a child, while playing "cops and robbers", (me as a cop), one kid insisted he had to pretend to commit a crime. I then told him he was "under arrest for resisting arrest", because I thought it was funny. He argued that I couldn't arrest him for that and he had to pretend to commit a REAL crime. I thought it was funny. I now wish my joke had been wrong as we both assumed.
I had completely forgotten about the Crosby case where he was assaulted for “stealing” his own car. I of course had only heard the ridiculous versions! Thank you for clearing that case up, I’m realizing that I need to rethink a few of my stances on suing/what makes a frivolous lawsuit.
@Luís Andrade don't believe a well sourced video by an expert in the field. Much better to just trust your vague feelings you picked up through cultural osmosis. Literal baby brain shit.
The truth is nearly all frivolous lawsuits end in failure for the plaintiff. If they won a bunch of money, the chances are the lawsuit was not frivolous at all.
@Luís Andrade Politicians seeking to protect their shareholders from liability are the one that have the greatest ability to lie and serve their own self interest. The video demonstrates this well, pointing out politicians deliberately manipulating the public in order to sway people like you who do not care about the facts.
⚖️ What should I cover next?
☕️ Morning Brew is better than McDonald's brew anyway. Sign up for free: legaleagle.link/morningbrew
nice
Never tried Morning Brew, but McD coffee is the whip ☕ 🤣🤣🤣
The oj simpson case.
cover Critical Race Theory. its the giant right wing Boogeyman going around now and they dont even know what it is
Be interesting to hear more about what it takes for the average American to take on big companies in court. Seems it rarely is worth the time and expense.
I worked at McDonald's as a teen in the 80's. Every single person I worked with had been burned by the insanely hot coffee. This was no joke.
After almost 30 years, McDonalds STILL has not reduced the temperature either.
McDonald's coffee is so frustratingly hot. It stays way too hot for way too long. It doesn't make the coffee taste good to have it burn the shit out of my tongue for the first 20 minutes that I have it.
@@nathanielmohr9622 not to mention drinking beverages over 140 degrees Fahrenheit has been linked to developing throat cancer
@@urk5204 I heard that everyone who gets throat cancer drank water
@@LapisPebblethis just means that there isn't a link. What's your point?
The worst part of the "Aunt from hell" situation is that the media acted like they were defending the little boy, but they were the only part of the situation that actually harmed him as had to watch the entire country mock his beloved Aunt because of something he set into motion. Could you imagine if when you were 8 you accidentally injured somebody you loved with your entire heart as a direct result of the injury they started getting harrassed by the entire country? that is emotionally scarring.
American media harassing a family and putting an innocent individual in the worst possible light so they can get some clicks and ad views for their terrible dying business model?
Say it ain't so.
She shouldn't have sued, then. Geez.
@@wmdkitty did you even watch the video?
@@wmdkitty commenting without watching the video and getting the details? Geez.
@@wmdkitty it's almost like you're doing exactly what the news outlets did.
I'm glad you covered the old woman who was screwed by McDonalds. They really went out of their way to make her out to be an idiot and she was just a sweet old lady who was seriously injured.
They should have gotten additional fines for that. Doesn't this count as libel?
Just imagine a room full of super rich CEOs sitting around a table after the fact, stewing angrily over having to pay an old woman pocket change for her medical bills, because they had decided that no matter how many people got hurt, that coffee had to be able to melt metal. They had the option to be gracious and apologetic, but no! Let's pull that old lady through the muck in the hopes that people would be to scared to sue them in the future.
A sweet old lady should learn in her 79 years that coffee is made with boiling water
Yeah good on her, it forced them to make things safer. It was going to happen sooner or later that someone would get hurt. 2.5 million isn't a lot to Maccys
@MRGRUMPY53 All the same!Only there is a Warning on the cup!
@@c1bersnake The boiling point of water is 100°C, this was apparently nearly double that. Even if it had been 120°C it would've classed as boiling.
the hot coffee case is really sad tbh. i listened to a podcast called unsavoury about food and law that covered it. she pretty much died alone. her family claimed she was so embarrassed and got so much backlash and humiliation from the media she hated leaving her house and essentially became a shut in after the case and leading up to her death.
Another life ruined by mass media parasites. 😞
That is very tragic, many times the media doesn’t think about the long term effect they have on individuals.
I honestly wished her family sued the radio host for defamation of character for mocking her. He was the catalyst. It’s very very sad to hear what happened. She deserved every penny
That breaks my heart. I wish she would have gotten justice in her lifetime
Where were they? I mean, an 80+ year old who has gone through this traumatic experience might well need some emotional support.
If something like this happened to my mom, me and my three cats would be on the road ASAP, so I could be there as long as necessary.
the mcdonald’s lawsuits portrayal by the media will never cease to enrage me, they called her some greedy karen when she actually just wanted her medical bill paid
Which is a testament of how crappy is the healthcare system in the US, but doesn't change the fact it was a ridiculous lawsuit. Almost everywhere else, she would have received immediate treatment at no cost and as such she would have no beef with McDonalds for making hot coffee hot, recognized it was her own fault for been careless and move on with her life, while everyone else would get their coffee hot as they wanted. And any further legal proceeding would have been dismissed as frivolous.
To this day, I randomly find coffee shops around the world making fun of this lawsuit by putting witty comments in their coffee cups.
@@Imman1s Dude it was so hot it caused 3rd degree burns. Its litteraly illegal to sell coffee that hot.
They were both at fault.
@@devlinambers9408 Starbucks coffee is this hot all the time.
@@mikejunior211 you regularly get third degree burns from drinking your coffee??? No??? Then it's not as hot. It's not that a hot coffee was "hot" it was literally hot enough to burn through several layers of skin, probably far enough to reach muscle tissue. Imagine that happening in your mouth. McDonald's was aware of the problem but did nothing until this lawsuit MADE them change the temperature of their coffee. Regular warning labels would be "caution: may be hot" while the warning for this coffee should've been "caution: may melt your skin off "
The fact that McDonald's suffered no bad press from this case is a travesty.
It's awful how many lawsuits wrongfully portrayed as frivolous have discrimination or unaffordable medical bills (or both) at their hearts.
Because of
*K A R E N S*
OH AND NOTE
KARENS CAN BE BLACK TOO!
Well the medical bills are something you guys voted for so only have yourselves to blame.
@@RiotforPeacePlz Eh not with the level of voter suppression we have here
Of course they do. It's the people with money that are able to portray them as such. Insurance companies and corporations have a vested interest in these incidents being portrayed as frivolous. If people sue, they lose money.
@@SLOTHSRIDEUNICORNS it's not Karen's it's republicans lol
We talk about the McDonald's coffee lawsuit every year in my physics class when we do thermodynamics. Every year, without fail, the kids have been surprised when they found out what actually had happened and how hot the coffee actually was.
If anyone gives me coffee or tea less than the temperature served to this lady.....I would probably say no thank you.
@@Doeyhead Then don't order coffee. Corporations have to ensure the safety of their customers, and not selling your coffee at near boiling temperatures to save on cost is one of those safety measures.
@@TheAlmightyJello I'm sorry but I just think that is so silly. I know so many people who would prefer their coffee hot. And some teas dont even steep correctly if they arent brewed at 212. It was a frivolous lawsuit.
@@Doeyhead McD won't give you a free Big Mac buddy
@@Doeyhead "You know its stupid that trains have a speed limit of 60mph when they can easily go over a hundred. I know so many people who would like to get to their destination faster." Thats what you sound like. Safety needs to be a priority over hot coffee. Corporations dont care about you. They would sooner kill you than give up easy money.
The coffee lady wasn't negligent at all. People spill things all the time and don't get their skin melted off. Why? The same reason nobody else sold coffee 20 degrees from boiling. I'd always heard it was so hot it caused the cup it was in to collapse and that caused the spill. Even if she dumped it, I think there's a reasonable assumption that something handed to you through a window into a car won't cause burns similar to napalm.
You have got to be kidding. I wouldn't drink a hot drink in a moving car under any circumstances. It is self-evidently dangerous. To stick the cup between her legs is even more breathtakingly stupid.
@@joshuarosen6242 It was a parked car…
@@gnranger OK, I obviously wasn't paying proper attention at that point and that does make it seem less irresponsible but I'd still never put something obviously dangerous next to my favourite body part.
@@joshuarosen6242”obviously dangerous” it was a cup of coffee. it’s obviously not supposed to be hot enough to cause serious burns.
@@esobelisk3110 It obviously is. Everyone in the UK is taught that hot drinks are dangerous from a young age. I've asked numerous friends whether they would ever put a fresh hot drink between their thighs and they've all looked at me like I was mad even to ask such a question.
I would absolutely expect a fresh cup of coffee to cause terrible burns if poured on skin. Why wouldn't it - it's made from water that's boiling or almost boiling. It wouldn't be more obviously dangerous if it were battery acid.
Fun fact, the McDonald's coffee lawsuit is also why most cars now have cup holders. Manufacturers realized that if the car she was in had cup holders, her cup would have been in one and therefore not spilled. Fearing a lawsuit against them because of this, they started putting cupholders in all their cars, not just the higher trim levels.
Yeah she very well could’ve listed them as one of the parties responsible
Wow, so not only was she not at fault for suing them, she actually helped folks in the long run!
Where did you read this?
@@xuavrice2338 She wouldn't have been able to list a car manufacturer as responsible for not providing cup holders, a non standard accessory at the time. Even if it was a standard accessory that wasn't in her grandson's car, her not having one wasn't why a cup of coffee caused major burns. No matter how it spilled on skin it was still hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns in 15 seconds.
What? How are they responsible if someone eats in their car or not? That sounds like total bs
Here’s another one I found: a guy sued McDonalds over emotional distress for only getting one napkin with his meal. Dumb right? Except no, the issue was that when he asked for more napkins, they started racially harassing him.
That escalated quickly!
@@TaeruAlethea deadass! I was like "oh, where can this go?" and boom! Racism. Wow! Y'all did it again, I was surprised.
Well, that's a bit misleading
I hate click bait-ty tittles
198/199
Was he black, white, hispanic, or asian? When did this happen? Those two factors might have something to do with it.
Back when I worked in the food service industry, I had a customer spill a cup of hot coffee on her toddler. It soaked his whole Tshirt. The coffee we brewed was not hot enough to cause burns, the child was crying and in pain, but suffered no permanent injuries. If Stella leibeck hadn’t sued McDonald’s, that coffee probably would’ve been hot enough to disfigure the child. She’s saved countless lives from permanent injury over the years and helped make work conditions safer for food service workers.
@@HiddenRealm by "one location" you mean "every McDonald's"?
When i was a kid i had like half a cup of coffee spilled on my arm at a McDonald's, i was fine but if not for Steila Leiback my right arm would have probably been permanently disfigured
@@HiddenRealm > "one time one case"
> literally tells that McDonald's knew their coffee was too hot and did absolutely nothing in the video
@@HiddenRealm in the video around 2:25 he shows McDonald's company records that show that McDonald's had over 700 complaints of people being burned. this was not a one location, one time scenario
@@HiddenRealm you don't use your brain much huh?
"He was arrested for resisting arrest for a crime he didn't commit"
The fact that not being arrested is an arrest worthy offence
YOu don't know what "resisting arrest" means. "Resisting arrest" is when you are informed you are being place under arrest and you try to phyisically prevent the officers from doing so.
@@chriskay1449 so you are the victim of a crime (unlawful arrest), and defending yourself is itself a crime. Great
@@anna-flora999 yea otherwise the police could just harrass whoever they want and if they resist, bam, easy jail sentence. Man some people are dumb
My ex-husband was a public defender and anytime the police do anything that could get them in trouble, they always arrest the person for resisting arrest -- because they have to arrest them for something. Because if they physical force and don't arrest them for anything, it looks really bad. And resisting arrest just means they weren't cooperating with the police so it's easy to argue that when there is no evidence of committing an actual crime.
@@Aeivious the simplest way to not have conflict is to just go with it. The charges will be dropped if they have nothing on you and struggling just makes them tougher on you.
A news outlet phrasing "Black Man gets wrongfully accused of crime and arrested under excessive force - sues for punitive damage" as "Man sues for 1.2 million because he stole his own car" is intentionally malicious, and frankly should (Note: SHOULD, not saying it does, not a lawyer) constitute defamation
Both titles would be pathetic since you felt the need to add, "black" too it. I'm tired of everyone constantly attempting to emotionally manipulate readers from the first line.
And before you say anything, I'm a black male myself.
I mean its important context.
lmfao he got jumped on by a whole mob, if that isnt excessive force, nothing is.
right, I didnt realise that it was impossible to do without dogpiling on him and kneeing him.
Of course he was "resisting arrest" he wasnt even charged with a fking crime.
For all he knew he was being harrassed by a bunch of drunk blokes who managed to get their hands on some uniforms.
@@Dedition but the race does matter for context. You think the woman would have called the cops on a white kid with a hoodie?
The media should be sued for claiming that the poor guy "stole" his own car.
And most Fox News presenters, from Megyn Kelly to Tucker "Karen" Carlson, should have been made to pay millions for all the individuals they've smeared over the years, just because it suited their politics.
@@GC-qe8vc Fox should be legally barred from using the word "news" in their name. The majority of their content consists of opinions, not facts, and they've said so in court.
@@andyb1653 that's literally every major news outlet. Did you forget the child that was slandered by CNN and MSNBC because he smiled at a native American? The kid did nothing wrong and he was doxxed and slandered.
@@nocthemedic2951 No. My calling out Fox doesn't mean I give CNN a free pass at all. I'm just saying that Fox is the worst of the bunch. Has been for years. (edit: amongst the major "news" networks, that is. There ARE some that are even worse **cough** OANN, TYT **cough** )
@@andyb1653 fair. I made an unfair assumption. Generally people like to call out one news organization while completely ignoring the others while the truth is that they all suck
For the McDonald's lawsuit, I remember my dad warning me about how hot McDonald's drinks could be and I need to be careful about when drinking it rather than ridiculing the lawsuit.
when I finally learned the truth about that lawsuit a few years ago from some random article I was shocked and it changed my perspective on so many things. that lady was turned into a punchline by the media. 😑
@@djangofett4879 Same. I thought it was a joke but then saw the photos in an article and nearly puked.
You had a good dad. My dad listened to Rush Limbaugh.
Around that time I had breakfast and coffee at McDonalds. Even tho I waited for coffee to cool while I ate breakfast I still burnt my mouth badly on first sip.
@Frank Rauen and it means the coffee isn't literally burnt, technology connections has a good video on why scalding hot coffee is just generally dumb.
This reminds me of the time my insurance company hired an arbitration law firm because they wanted me to sue my service dog.
I was out walking him when I fell and hit my head on a brick wall, resulting in a concussion. I'd explained to the ER staff at one point that my dog had gotten distracted by something and didn't properly alert. He was still VERY young / very new, despite being trained, and even the best trained dogs aren't 100% all of the time.
I don't know what the ER wrote down, but my insurance had a lawfirm contact me by mail and tell me that they knew someone else was at fault, and the insurance wouldn't cover my ER expenses unless I sued the responsible party. I informed them that there was no one else involved, it was just me. They wrote back that the doctors at the hospital had said that my medical assistant had been negligent, resulting in my fall.
I had to actually get on the phone speak with someone and asked them if they really wanted me to sue my dog. They briefly entertained the idea of having me sue the organization that trained my dog, but eventually decided against it. This took a full year! A full year where my insurance company wanted me to sue my dog for damages.
I worked in Insurance (in Germany, but it seems like they are all the same) and I totally believe that.
If there is a way to save money, they will find it.
Great story, thanks for sharing
Woof woof your honor
what is the point of having insurance if they wont pay you unless you sue your dog. greedy pieces of shit
Your honour, my client is too much of a very good boy to commit this crime!
*Insurance company wanted to sue your dogs insurance company
Something to ponder: if insurance companies operated in a way that paid out more in claims than they collected from their customers, they would be out of business quickly
Just as a general rule, if a lawsuit looks patently stupid and silly and foolish in the reporting? Look deeper, there's probably something legit about it. Not always, of course, but often enough that its worth giving them the benefit of the doubt, especially if they're suit is against a massive corporation.
My general rule is if a judge is letting it to actually go to trial there is probably something worth litigating
Small note: This rule does not apply to Donald Trump ;)
@@wvdh Mhm, safe assumption that everything that comes out of the rabid cheeto's mouth is patently stupid and silly
Right, if a lawsuit goes nowhere, that doesn't mean much. Anyone can sue for whatever they want. But if a large judgment is awarded, there is probably a reason a jury of 12 people decided that was reasonable, and why the judge allowed it. Maybe in some cases it's due to poorly-written or unreasonably punitive laws (e.g. a $2 million judgment for illegally downloading 24 songs), but in most cases it's because the news didn't give you all the information.
Ex of one that is ridiculous: Nunes suing the twitter account of a parodist.
Usually, if it's somebody in power filing a seemingly frivolous lawsuit, it's probably actually frivolous. If it's somebody without power filing the lawsuit, it's probably legitimate. Our justice system sucks and the powerful love to abuse it.
Alternate title: Lawsuits that were portrayed wrongfully by media
Bro in india this goes way too far. When sanjay Datt was wrongly said ti be a terrorist, when you watch his real story it makes you wanna kill the reporters. He was charged with illegal hold of weapons but the report written was about him being a terrorist. 😬
@@omg_ronnie Im from Sri Lanka not much different here
From Nigeria govt are clowns.. it's the opposite always saying nonsense
Yep
Alternate alternate title: American Health System is the reason behind lawsuits that were portrayed wrongfully by media
I love that you are covering these lawsuits, they really deserved better.
I lived in abq during this and oh boy everyone had the wrong idea. As a kid we all knew about it and we got the thoughts from our parents who were all tricked.
Indeed! I actually enjoyed this more than the typical frivolous lawsuit bashing.
without a doubt
@@DyslexicMitochondria Hey, Funny seeing you here. Your videos are awesome btw
It really is absurd that so-called journalists/newspapers can get away with this sort of rubbish.
As someone who has actually worked at McDonalds, I found that no matter how hot we ever got the coffee, people would come up and whine about it not being hot enough. We even tried sticking it in a microwave for a minute just to deal with one particularly obstinate person who wouldn't believe it was freshly-brewed because "freshly brewed coffee should be hot!" even though it was hot enough to actually blister skin BEFORE we did that and I was legit afraid it would melt the cup if we got it any hotter(We were still using the foam coffee cups at the time). I'd swear coffee drinkers could drink actual lava and complain that it's "not hot enough"
I have become convinced that people like this have just scalded their tongues numb and can't feel anything.
THANK YOU.
@@shaurmiath6719 tru
Used to have this all the time with milky coffees like lattes where I used to work. People boil water at home and pour it over instant coffee, then assume a shot of espresso topped with steamed milk should be a comparable temperature.
Breathe a sigh of relief on me: although I *never* go to McDonald's for _anything,_ I brew my Coffee at home at *155 F.* 1 TBSP of coffee grounds, put in the filter in the drip system, pour 8 ounces or so. The point is, we don't all demand to drink Molten Lava.
... And yes, the flavor's tolerable. It seems less acidic, and I mostly buy Aldi Organic Coffee, if you want to be specific.
Glad you picked this: the coffee story circulated even in German schools and was used as an example how crazy U.S. law can be.
some 20+ years later I stand corrected and am now fully informed, thank you.
Yeah, US law is definitely crazy, but for wholly different reasons.
It is crazy, but it is crazy because their healthcare system is screwed up. The woman is however not crazy for suing, that is how the US law system is and how it's used to pay for medical expenses.
Well the customer wasn't smart either, I wouldn't blame McDonald's only..
@@alihorda We don't, we blame McDonald's 80% and her 20%
I get really tired of people citing this lawsuit as an example of frivolous lawsuits.
You left out the part about why they brewed the coffee at such an extreme temperature. They did it to maximize the amount of coffee per bean. Apparently the hotter you brew it the more coffee you can produce. So they didn't just ignore a danger to their customers they knowingly created the danger and likely calculated that the cost of settling lawsuits was less than the additional profits made by brewing the coffee at the hottest temp possible. Super shady stuff. I think they got off pretty damn lightly. No doubt their marketing department had something to do with the negative public opinion against that little old lady.
Go to any place where they actually drink coffee (not the stuff from the US) and ask the what the proper brewing temp is. Depending on the method of brewing it has to high for the right aroma to get out! Probably MCDonalds did it for money. But it's not their fault that people are idiots!
Using that logic you should sue every oven manufacturer, because if you take out anything you put in it at high temps will burn your skin off in seconds! In the US you might even win!
@@Nemesis-pe7mw That is a false equivalence
coffee should be brewed at 195-205 F to get the right taste. I brew mine at 202 every morning. the issue isn't that they brewed it so hot, it's that they held it at that temperature and proceeded to serve it at that temperature. if you brew it that hot it needs to cool before being served - it's not like it's actually drinkable when it's that hot so not sure why you would even serve it
The brewing temperature makes perfect sense. The SERVING temperature is the issue. The reason they served it that hot is due to sit-in customers. They wanted to make it so that the customer would have to wait before being able to drink the coffee. This reduces the chance of the customer being able to get a free refill. The calculation wasn’t lawsuit settlements vs coffee brewed. It was lawsuit settlements vs free refills.
@@isaacevilman7586 Yep you guys are both right i got the details mixed up. I still suspect the way this story was handled by the media was manipulated by McDonald's. But that's almost to be expected I guess.
Anyone realize that most of these lawsuits were due to medical bills?
Sounds pretty American to me
I think it's because health insurance companies won't pay if there's someone else they can blame. In 1993, my son was 5. He was playing at his friend's house across the street when the boy swung a stick and accidentally hit my son's hand. It blew open his finger and ripped the entire nail off. We drove to the hospital and they sewed it all back together. Everything went back to normal but then my insurance company sued my neighbor for reimbursement. I had to deal with a lot of red tape and LIE to my health insurance company, telling them that the injury happened on my property so they couldn't sue my neighbor. It made the last 3 years we lived there uncomfortably tense, because our neighbors didn't understand that I wasn't suing them, and that my health insurance company was doing it against my will and outside of my control. That business practice should be illegal, imo.
@@michiganmaxedout6248 Just an FYI, be careful about telling that story. State law varies, but in my state, any misleading statement involving life or disability (health) [that's how it is legally referred to, not my wording] insurance does not have a statute of limitations. If the insurer discovers you willfully lied to them, they can and likely will sue you. It's normally used if people do not disclose preexisting conditions, but may or may not be pertinent here.
Source, licensed insurance agent.
Having good health insurance would make life so much easier and more secure for most Americans. As well as universal insurance for liability.
In Europe, most people have both. Really makes a difference.
I thought of that right away as well. It makes me wonder, in countries where the state universally covers medical bills, does the government use the legal process to recover damages? Something analogous to the state lawsuits against tobacco companies that happened through the 1990's.
Not exactly a lawsuit, but it was a civil court case: I remember this one article posted to social media where the headline claimed that a man lost custody of his son for refusing to feed him junk food. Because it was posted to social media, there were a lot of comments before you actually click on the link and it was clear that many people formed an opinion and commented without reading the article. They were all outraged and backing the man who lost custody. After I read the first two or three paragraphs, the writer finally explained the real reason why the man lost custody.
The father was supposed to take his toddler son on an outing that was to be supervised by someone appointed by the court to see how he was with the child. The son wanted to stop for McDonalds and the father said no. No problem there. But when the child started crying, the dad lost his cool and immediately turned around, drove back, gave the child back to the mother and took off rather than deal with a crying child. He had options for dealing with the tantrum other than giving the kid fast food, but he chose the one where he just gives up being a dad. He literally decided he didn't want to be a parent and showed that he trusted the mom to handle it better, so the court just agreed with him.
It's flat out misleading for clicks, because the junk food itself wasn't the reason he lost custody.
I worked at a McDonald's in 1996, just before McDonald's corporate had finished changing their coffee makers in response to the coffee lawsuit, and I can tell you that those old coffee makers were highly dangerous for everyone. The water temperature was so hot that both employees and customers often scalded themselves (minorly, thankfully) when dealing with the coffee. I remember at least two people I worked with absolutely refusing to touch the coffee maker because they had been burnt by it. I think everyone was thankful when corporate finally replaced that insidious machine with traditional coffee carafes.
even now, they still serve coffee at a way higher temp than necessary. i worked at mcdonalds last year and had to go home to treat first degree burns from a pretty small spill on my wrist, and the coffee wasn’t even that freshly brewed (for comparison i now work at starbucks and if i spill FRESH drip coffee it barely leaves a mark, it’s just slightly red and stings for a few minutes)
Back in the 80's when I worked at McDonalds out of high school, I suffered from burns from that stupid coffee pot more times than I care to count! The ONE time I had to go to the doctor because the burn was pretty severe, my manager literally asked me, "how hard is it NOT to spill coffee on yourself?". I told him it wouldn't be a problem if the coffee wasn't hot enough to boil a potato.
Was it worse than McDonalds' ice cream machines?
Whats scary is that earlier i saw a person who claimed to own a coffee shop who was dying on the hill that the McDonald's lawsuit was frivolous even after watching the video.
Makes me never wanna drink coffee at any place other than in my home again lmao
@@swimsvg1855
This is truly sad... I shouldn't suffer second degree buns when I accidently spill coffee on my self! Boiling water, yes, but coffee?? I STILL have the scar on my hand where this happened (at 20ish) and I'm now 57.
A friend of mine studied this case in college and also found that McDonald's not only knew the coffee was too hot, but did a study to show that the hotter the coffee was, the more they sold and that the profits outweighed the cost of lawsuits and settlements, which is another reason they lost this case.
So.. you're basically saying people prefer coffee to be too hot. And some don't and handle it by filing lawsuits.
@@davidfaustino4476 That's not really what he was saying at all
@@davidfaustino4476 You're telling me people want their coffee to be so hot it causes the styrofoam cup to deform and literally melt through skin?
The problem with the general public is that we tend to ignore facts and generalize things. 140 F is hot. 200 F is also hot. However the difference between both of them is that one of them literally melts your skin. Even though they're both "hot" there's a difference
@@davidfaustino4476 you wholeass missed the entire point of the video, lmao
@@davidfaustino4476 so you’re basically saying that you can’t read and also don’t know how to watch a video?
It's funny how it's the person suing that gets the hate, when they are suing large corporations....corporations who often couldn't care less about individual customers. Like is it worth defending these companies?
Indeed couldn't agree more
Corporations often act to make the person suing look bad because it protects their interests. McDonald's can keep on selling their volcanic java with no problems as long as they convince people that's normal.
Corporates control the story. So sway public opinion.
Luckily now there's no way these corporations can get away with it with how the internet works
Yes it’s worth defending them they pay well
So glad the aunt and her nephew are still close. Her being forced to sue just to get an insurance payout could have really damaged that
Hahahahah she wasn’t “forced to sue” She wanted a payout so she even sued her nephew to try and get paid.
After watching “Hot Coffee”, I’ve run around for years saying, “no no, shut the hell up about that because you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about because the media mislead all of us on that and the elderly woman this revolved around almost died of shock”. And it surprises me a lot that a bunch of people still don’t know the truth and keep telling the media’s story.
People love simping for corporate.
Temporarily embarassed millionaire mentality.
Maybe from a legal standpoint the coffee was too hot to be served at... but from a scientific standpoint that lawsuit was still ridiculous I think. Water (or in this case coffee) can only exist at sea level as a liquid when it is under 100 degrees C. Most coffeemakers (even the one in your home) brew it at this temperature, you can even hear the one way valve flutter from the boiling as you brew it. Any freshly brewed coffee would have done the same thing given the same volume unless it was deliberately cooled one way or another after brewing.
If anything this video illustrates a different point, how in 16 minutes a lawyer can convince most people that it isn't a ridiculous lawsuit. Same sort of burns would have happened with any freshly brewed coffee in that volume on an old lady's skin directly in her lap. Or any freshly boiled water for that matter.
@@14arma it’s not necessarily about the temperature, what it is about is the principle that we were mislead on the issue for me. Passenger seat of a parked vehicle? And do you also remember how flimsy those old cups were? Maybe the coffee itself isn’t the issue, but keeping the customer safe from it very well should be.
@@tylertucker9460 I think its a difference of opinion at that point, I think if anything the lawyer is trying to mislead as I understand anything hot enough to burn me should be treated with care and I'm assuming others would know that as well. There are plenty of things in this world that are sold or rented out that have a much higher probability of accident with much more severe consequences when mishandled, cars are rented out every day to people with no experience driving that model, guns are sold to people with no shooting experience, some drinks at bars are served to people while on fire. I think it boils down to the level of freedom vs security people are comfortable with and you value the security a little bit more than I value the freedom. The lawyers are right when it comes to the legal view of it as they get paid to convince people in situations that are convincible (like this one), but I'm looking at this from a medical and scientific standpoint and don't think the injuries were any worse than what you should expect if you spill a cup full of boiling water on your lap, and the coffee was not significantly more hot than any other freshly brewed coffee, as it would be impossible for the coffee to be any hotter than boiling temperatures without being in a gas form.
@@14arma I mean, you’re not wrong in any of this, really. Opinion could really be what this is coming down to. I do value freedom as well as security, and I think there’s a line to be walked with it. I suppose what I really think about is the flimsy styrofoam cup that busted in her lap while putting sugar and cream into while in the passenger seat in a spot, and everyone thinks, “she spilled it on herself while driving,” and all that, you know? We’re certainly allowed to form opinions with the facts we’re presented with, and the people without those facts have a very misinformed opinion. There are a few things that upset me about the case in general, and that comes from my personal lens, just as yours comes from your own. You do bring a VERY good point in the handling of things with inherent risk. I sincerely hope I’m not coming off as an asshole when I say this has actually been an interestingly civil debate that ends with an agreement to disagree which doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should. I thank you for being respectful and hope that I have adequately provided respect in return.
I remember one assignment I got in school was about the McDonalds Coffee Cup lawsuit, and about how much McDonalds put into smearing her in the public eye. It was basically about how corporations can use advertisements and media campaigns, and how they may warp public perceptions.
I probably would have benefited from having teachers like yours.
People still believe Stella was just a clumsy, greedy old woman…when I tell people Mcdonald’s only offered $800 to cover her 20k medical bills, which is what she wanted, I always ask…so now who’s the greedy one?
The case left her hands really early on. It was mainly the fight where her insurance company raged for more money because insurance companies are generally scam-level businesses who hate paying anything and McDonald's had an army of lawyers worth billions that were paid more than what McDonald's was ever willing to pay those who sue. Stella was, directly and indirectly, demonized by both for their mutual greed.
Stella! /Sarcasm
She is
Uh... stella. If I ignore all safety warnings and stick my hand in a woodchipper, why would Woodchipper inc. pay a dime for the harm _I did to myself?_ She held a disposable coffee cup in an unsafe manner while wearing clothes which increased the harm its contents could cause.
@@jsn1252 coffee should never be served hot enough to give 3rd degree burns. That is gross negligence which is why they lost the case...
thank you for educating people on the liebeck case, i'm allways horrified when i notice how many people still believe that nonesense about this poor old lady just being greedy.
The best documented case of mass manipulation that i know about. It worked so well that at some point the lie spread by itself like the myth about mew under the truck.
Mew under the truck is real though, kind of. There's a glitch called item underflow that can be used to manipulate all sorts of things so it's actually possible to make the truck push-able and have Mew appear when you push it (there was a GDQ speedrun years ago that showed it off, may have been a TAS, not sure).
@@grn1I mean, there was also a question of why was it there?
And 30 years later, nothing has changed.
I had heard the actual facts of the "aunt from hell" case. from my understanding , the family even encouraged her to sue, because if she won they could get their homeowners insurance to cover it. since no one would reasonably assume an 8 year old could pay that kind of money.
Maybe now she can sue the state of Connecticut for defamation of character.
why did she submit a insurance claim over a broken wrist? Also she was rich as shit. POS aunt in my book.
$100K+ for a broken wrist?
@@bow_wow_wow 30 grand for the cast and 60 grand just to see the doctor and 10 grand in administrative fees.
@@gimbobjenkins405 Our healthcare is a joke.
What he didn't mention about the McDonald's case is that the burns were so severe, her labia were fused together. She ended up having over five separate surgeries. All she wanted out of the case was for McDonalds to pay her medical bills and instead, they ruined her life.
She ruined her life when she spilled hot coffee on herself due to her own stupidity and to bad it didn’t kill her so I wouldn’t have to hear about this stupid situation
Ouch. That poor old woman! 😱
pretty sure he was pretty descriptive without going into full detail plus he's probably trying to avoid demonitization
Again her own damn fault, I've been drinking HOT coffee for 30 years and I have never ONCE put it between my legs
@@swolfe9668 yeah, that't like suing the axe maker company, cuz you cut your own leg off with it. absolute nonsense case.
Something people also forget is just how badly designed McDonalds coffee lids and cups used to be. You use to have to tear the plastic along a perforated line to open the lid. With the cups then made of cheap styrofoam it was very easy to spill.
This man is spitting straight fax
this mcdonalds specifically was notorious for making their coffee too hot. they burned tons of people prior to her claim. it was actually an absurd temperature that they were serving their coffee at.
@@TheStevieb1983 In one of the larger cases, the coffee actually melted the cup. Without anyone trying to open it or mishandle it, the cup itself melted from the heat of the coffee. Absurd.
The fact that the old woman simply wanted her medical bills covered which McDonald's refused in such a ridiculous way also really makes me happy that they had to pay a lot more in the end.
@@noname-dt6sv even more fun, if you google the injuries..... oh boy those images ain't fun that's for sure.
My oldest sister sued me after a car accident because my insurance was being unreasonable and would not cover her medical bills and yes it was technically my fault as I ran the light. I did join in on a class action lawsuit as my accident was not the first in that intersection and two of the accidents had been fatal because of how the traffic light had been placed on a blind corner in front of the intersection. To this dat my sister and I get along just fine and support what she had to do
'technically my fault as I ran the light'
@@thomasmoseley9749 judging from what they said, they couldn't see the stop light coming up to the intersection, thus the "technically".
Exactly why I hate poor infrastructure and car centric building. Glad you two have a good relationship still!
The case with the aunt is disturbing, that you have to sue to get your medical bills covered by your insurance is ridiculous.
Except she wasn't suing to get her own insurance to pay. She was suing to get the HOME OWNER's insurance to pay ie the nephews parents.
@@chriskay1449 It's the fact that you have to sue to get medical bills covered that is disturbing / ridiculous.
@@pastajensen She did not have to sue at all. He was working and had her own insurance. She was looking for someone else to pay her bills because she was greedy and cheap.
Homeowners insurance, if it includes bodily injury, is for things like, if someone trips on your stairs because of negligent upkeep. If she'd tripped in a hole on the lawn, that might have been considered 'justified'. The thing I don't get about that one though is if it really happened like is said, there was no negligence on the part of the person holding the homeowner's insurance so there should have been no case. Unless the claim is that the parents, who hold the policy, not the child, didn't keep their kid from tackling her.
So, essentially, she still thought something the homeowner had done / not done was at fault.
If my 70 pound dog jumps up on my mom and knocks her down causing injury, that's my fault. She'd still not likely to sue me to have her medical expenses covered though.
@@chriskay1449 Nope, not the case. she needed theirs because that's what insurance told her. And her sibling was more than okay with that, because they spoke about it.
"Scalding hot" coffee doesn't adequately describe the situation. The coffee was almost BOILING. the few times I bought Mc Donald's coffee it took an hour before it was cool enough to drink. McDonald's deliberately and negligently sold coffee hot way beyond reason. Why? Because it was more profitable.
Why was it more profitable?
@@wolfram4234 I might be wrong but it has to do with them not having to re-heat the coffee every hour and so, so they let it be boiling hot and then let it stand like that. Again I might be wrong on the reason but it's something like this which I think basically saved them a really small amount.
@@wolfram4234 One reason is at the time they offered free refills on coffee. By keeping it too hot they severely reduced the actual number of free refills they would have to give out because few people would be lingering long enough to wait for one cup to cool, drink it, then repeat.
@@wolfram4234 In blue collar industries like where I work people prefer the McDonalds coffee. If its overheated, then it will remain hot longer while on a jobsite or a warehouse. Even in the office people prefer it because they can sip on it for at least a few hours.
@@OlneyYouthMinister When you put it that way, I can get the appeal, but I do think it needs be said that being within 30F or so of boiling is pretty extreme.
They could easily dial that back a fair bit and still achieve nearly the same effect. It definitely seems reasonable to keep it at a temperature such that it doesn't pose a risk of causing, apparently, severely disfiguring burns.
Not to say it needs to be incapable of leaving burns, I mean, if you spill a hot drink that's on you, but, more like a "You grazed a stove" burn and not a... well, "Nearly boiling water poured on you" burn.
What’s depressing to me is that the motivation for every single one of these lawsuits is paying medical bills. The healthcare in the United States is an absolute abomination.
Well that and police brutality
@@imaniblack5291 And college debt
@@cottoncandiez8872 oh we care about it, we just can't afford it because hospitals and pharmacy companies can jack up the price as high as they want. I have food allergies and haven't had an Epipen in over a decade because whoever owns the patent for it raised the price by several hundred dollars. I have to be hyper aware of all the ingredients of whatever food I'm eating because i could go into anaphylactic shock if i eat the wrong thing. And you never know if someone will decide to substitute almond milk for dairy milk in a recipe to make it "Healthier" so if i don't know who made something at a get together and there isn't an ingredient list...i don't eat.
And unfortunately for me, other Americans find the idea of universal healthcare as appalling as murder. More appalling than murder, in some cases.
Yeah, America is insane, please send help
@@AskMia411 So, what what I get from this is that if people had their medical bills paid by the government, corporations would be off the hook because no one would sue for medical bills, and their dirty corporate practices that injure people would continue?
@@maryannecba3889 No, people could and should still sue corporations for negligence and damages. If a company is doing something that's harmful, to customers, to employees, they should face repercussions. Where in my comment did i insinuate that companies shouldn't be held accountable??? I feel like that's a given. As another comment i made on this video states: "Your safety regulations are written in blood." Meaning that if something is listed as a regulation, no matter how obvious or arbitrary, it's there because a company used the loophole of "Well, it isn't ILLEGAL to do this harmful thing, and it saves us money, let's do it! Who cares about the consequences for anyone else!"
If anything, my point was that there need to be more regulations enforced on medical care/production in regards to price, but even then, if a company knowingly does damage it should suffer consequences.
I’m a law student in Austria and I sent this video to my legal english professor cause we‘re currently discussing compensation culture.
Today we watched it in class and most people said they will be subscribing to your channel.
Thank you so much for your videos!
The most ridiculous thing by moral standard is you have to sue against someone just to let that insurance company even have a look at if you are able to receive the compensation. All those companies always find a way to be disgusting while obeying the law.
Yes, it’s ridiculous that homeowners insurance and her own health insurance refused to cover it. If I were her, I would have fought the homeowners insurance company since she was clearly injured on their property through no fault of her own.
If we had free universal health care, then most of these cases would cease to exist as people mostly sue to pay for medical expenses.
@@TheMrawesomest - But only medical expenses. You sue the insured, to activate their liability insurance. Liability, not just for bodily injury, but also property damage. Still need the insurance to cover that. Most states require auto insurance, but the most expensive part is the liability portion. That means if you get in a car wreck, the liability insurance does NOT pay for your cars damage, but the other parties damage, if you were found to be at fault.
I remember watching the documentary about it. All she wanted was about $80K for the medical bills. It was the grand jury that upped it to one million. The media sensationalized it and made her look like a golddigger
now, i aint saying she a gold digga, but she aint messing with no wait time for the skin grafts she needed to survive the damage caused by the insanely dangerous product she was served
@@Nesenda Yes! This is specifically what I thought was the issue at fault
Minor point but a petit jury more commonly known as a trial jury increased the award. A grand jury is used in criminal cases to decide if charges will be brought against a party or not.
@@Nesenda That particular source of quote has aged like milk.
the news are the real Golddiggers in this case
The coffee literally melted that poor lady’s labia together. That’s horrible.
.........AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
That's cause of the pants she was wearing i think. She had a parachute pants material which melts
@@Krushak8888 nylon melts at 516 F almost 3x the 180 to 190 F of coffee.
🥺🥺🥺
2.7m isn't enough. that is horrifying. McDonalds, come on.
im literally never going there again, as if that matters.
Bro, the fact that McDonald's coffee was served hot enough to permanently disfigure someone that spilt it on themselves is completely outrageous. I've spilled fresh hot coffee right from the coffee maker on my hands before and they barely turned pink. No drink needs to be that hot.
Exactly! That poor woman
I spilled hot tea from McDonald's on my thigh 8 years ago when I was 12. I had a large second-degree burn that left a mark for a year. I couldn't wear pants for a few days. What didn't happen was permanent injury that required medical attention and surgery. It's utterly absurd to think that spilling some coffee naturally means you'll need immediate medical attention.
Fun fact: A news reporter who made fun of the coffee lawsuit ( I forgot where, but they're local news) had to leave work for literally a week because she burned her hands with McDonald's coffee on her way to work.
Karma
"NOOOO! MY HUBRIS!"
@@sarafontanini7051 Regular Show? 😂
@@camlock6319 No, Rick and Morty and maybe like one or two other things I dont' rememebr. I never actually wathed regular show
@@sarafontanini7051 Overly Sarcastic Productions’ Red also quotes this frequently. Ah, the hubris…
We spent a day on the McDonald's case in a business law class I took. The professor took a poll to see which side we were on before he revealed anything about the case, and 100% of the class sided with McDonald's. He took the same poll throughout class as we learned more and more about the case, and people starting switching over to support the plaintiff. By the end, once we learned all the details, 100% of the class sided with the victim and agreed that this case was totally legitimate.
100%? really?
Imagine being in such a brainless class.
Sounds like your class was full of morons. Or you made this story up.
Assuming it's true, they're confusing the act that led to the suit with the damages of the action. If we were to swap out a few elements, say a knife from a kitchen store and the lady putting the knife between her legs and cutting herself, I doubt you'd have the same reaction. And I don't think you'd be talking about how the "knife was too sharp" and that's what led to the issue.
The action that led to the suit was the mishandling of the item itself. The amount of damage is irrelevant to that finding. And putting a hot coffee between your legs is just plain stupid and reckless.
@@Rundvelt actually considering they were in a law class, no
Because civil case law sided with the plaintiff, not your opinion
@@zoruamaster2495 No, civil case law did not side with the plaintiff. An uninformed jury did.
And a bunch of law students and a biased professor also doesn't make a good argument from authority. (If there is a good one).
Damn Hearing this from the UK, I noticed in each situation, most were just looking for ways to pay their medical bills… honestly just sad, man.
Yeah the American healthcare system is complete shit. Coming from an American.
The other issue is that when left to its devices, the US Federal Congress is unwilling to really regulate against corporate interests. A lot of our regulations are as a result of precedents set by lawsuits e.g. Many modern safety standards usually have an American legal case as a catalyst somewhere in their story.
Breaking bad wouldn't be a thing if the por happened in Europe or Canada.
@@the0ne809 Nah, it would still happen. The issue wasn't medical bills if I recall, and making too little money gives people Government Healthcare.
@@stephenjenkins7971 No it wouldn't, the whole point was Walter was unable to pay for his Chemo through his insurance and that's why he sought to cook. It's after that he had enough money he started thinking about making more so his family could live comfortably.
tbh the thing that shocks me about the mcdonalds coffee case is just how hot the coffee is. im an ex-barista and i’ve touched our steaming wand accidentally, touched the very hot bits of the espresso machine, and even then we had a notoriously hot boiling water tap, never so much as a 2nd degree burn. if anything, that woman is great for only asking for essentially the bare minimum in settlement and not doing it selfishly.
I heard about the McDonald's case and was rolling my eyes, then I looked into it. Poor woman. Had every right to sue.
I love your avatar. I've never seen anyone move as fast as the guy running over to pick up the panda that face-planted!
Same
Ikr! Her injuries are just so terrible and looks so so so painful.
@@YACABE
So they made her place the coffee in a bad spot and took the actions to cause the spill? If that case was legit all places need a IQ test for service.
@@Tomgd420 It was their fault for selling an unsafe product without warning. A fun fact the lawyer left out is not only had the woman received third degree burns, the coffee was so hot it MELTED HER LIGAMENT. Personally I don't think anyone should be selling food so hot it melts your body parts after one wrong move. Imagine if a child had tried to grab their parents coffee and it melted and burned their face, or if the woman hadn't recieved help soon enough and had been left disabled. You can't just sell an unsafe product and blame the consumer when it injures them. Yes, it was her fault she spilt the coffee, but everything else was the fault of McDonalds.
Hot coffee is a great documentary and also reveals how corporations exaggerate “frivolous” lawsuits to create support for tort “reform” even though filing a lawsuit is the only recourse for an individual to hold a corporation accountable.
Tragic choice of name for that documentary.. every time I hear it I think it is going to be about sex in video games.
"Sir, people keep suing us when our product murders their children. Perhaps we should fix the code so that human children cannot be targeted by the 'seek and destroy' subroutine?"
"Perhaps... but that might be expensive. Instead let's make it illegal for us to be held accountable for our actions."
Tort reform is an agenda pursued by big businesses so that their bottom lines aren't affected by judgements against them while still screwing over the public at large
@@Shacko14 Exactly! They want to be able to do anything and have zero consequences. They should be held accountable for their actions, just like anyone. Doing it behind the "corporate veil" shouldn't exempt them.
Edit: Okay in some cases we do actually need individual humans to be legally distinct from the actions of the corporation they work for. The concept of the corporate veil is generally a good thing. But when a single person or specific group of people direct the corporation to do things that are "wrong," in whatever sense of the word "wrong" you want to apply, then those people should be held personally accountable for the actions of the corporation that they direct.
It's only when someone does not have the ability to direct the actions of a corporation that they should not be held accountable, in the same way we don't hold anyone accountable for things they can't control.
“Frivolous lawsuits” is a term coined by corporations to deter the public from bringing cases against them. Know your rights!!
And this is why we're binging Legal Eagle 😎 online legal facts & advice that only costs internet or mobile data
@@darrylbooc1196 nope. I paid 1k for that piece of information in university. The only piece of information I remember from that class😂
@@sandroh7573 media helps them so it makes sense
This is some tinfoil hat shit right here lol. Not uncommon for UA-cam comments sections.
"Frivolous lawsuits" really do happen, like what happened with Homicide Digital v. Jim Sterling, and following that, Homicide Digital v. Steam users who criticized their games. It's just in the cases presented in this video, they were portrayed wrongfully by the media as "frivolous lawsuits".
Know your rights - parasites.
I have had talks with soooo many people that still to this day believe the McD Coffee suit was ridiculous and frivolous. Have to link sooo many videos that actually break down just WHAT McD did and what they did wrong even to the point of them running an outright SMEAR campaign against the old lady using millions on TV adds.
Back in the days before the hot coffee lawsuit, one of my friends spilled her coffee on me after having had it for about ten minutes from McDonalds. This resulted in first degree burns across my arm. This was after ten minutes on young, firm forearm skin. Just imagine what fresh out of the pot coffee at those temperatures would do to elderly, thin, GROIN skin.
Also it was even hotter when Sarah Leibeck spilled it on herself
her labia were fused together
So your friend didn't let the coffee cool off? Nice.
@@vandalg282 ????
@@vandalg282 the person had bought it over 10 minutes before that incident. So yes they did. McDonald's just serves there coffee at over 190°
I've noticed that it seems a lot of these "stupid lawsuits" start with misleading headlines. Has there ever been such a thing as 'journalistic integrity' or is that just a myth?
There was a relatively brief time during the post WWII era where journalism came fairly close to 'integrity' overall, but other than that, it has always been a mixed bag, and one of the problems is that a lot of the people that were alive during that era still cling to the false notion that you don't have to be skeptical of what is reported. Especially today, we've reverted to another age of yellow journalism, where the most sensational headline 'wins'.
Doesn't mean that it's all lies or 'fake news' as a certain idiot liked to go on about, merely that you have to use your own damned sense and try to read between the lines.
It's a myth.
They aren't misleading. They are just lies. In the 3rd case, he did not win 1.25M for stealing his own car. That is not misleading, that is incorrect. That is no more true than saying "guy gets 1.25M because he stepped out of a car."
no lol "yellow journalism" aka literal fake headlines in order to sell more news stories gained popularity during the spanish american war in 1898
Novelty headline draws people to read their content. like clickbait. in the end of the day, it works, and you get viewership... in the 90s, viewership meant more sales, thus more profits.
Saying the guy "stole his own car" isn't misleading, it's a straight up lie.
Welcome to Fox "news"
@@yihadistxdl951 it was actually ABC who broke the story, couldn’t find a single Fox News vid or article with the headline
@@MyNamesComics Welcome to ABC "news". They are all the same.
Well yeah, it was a lie which is why it was misleading.
He should sue the news outlets for defamation
I hate the McDonalds coffee story every time I hear it. It's always so scummy what McDonalds corporate did.
Was scummy that a person does something stupid and blames them for their stupidity.
@@RiotforPeacePlz did you even watch the video?
@@RiotforPeacePlz bro you really don’t know what video you clicked on huh
@@RiotforPeacePlz She was indeed silly for putting something hot between her thighs, but it shouldn't be so hot it caused the cup to deform and cause burns so horrific her skin literally melted. It was so hot her skin tissue fused together and she had to undergo surgery to fix it.
If you're a child at a playground and play on the swings, of course there's a chance you might fall and injure yourself. But if the floor were full of spikes and you almost killed yourself playing on it, then most of the blame wouldn't be on you would it? It's a stupid analogy but the notion that she is 100% to blame is even stupider
@@RiotforPeacePlz Try watching the video before spewing your nonsense, kid.
Most of this to me shows how rough the USA's healthcare system is.
Most of these cases were just trying to get medical bills covered for injuries that weren't their fault.
If medical bills weren't so ludicrously high then most of these cases wouldn't have needed to be brought to court.
These people not only have to deal with life-changing injuries but then having to go through the courts process for months; and on top of that unfair scrutiny from the media and public.
Exactly.
Also it’s not just medical bills being high, it’s the whole system that sucks.
I wonder why republicans are acting like every single thing that helps people who don’t have millions is socialism when it isn’t…
This is the true takeaway of the entire video
I just don't agree with the 2nd paragraph of your statement. If there were free healthcare in the US, it wouldn't mean that the cases shouldn't be brought to court. It would just mean the offender, like McDonald's, wouldn't have to pay for hospital fees. I would still sue McDonald's for serving a coffee at 180° F, which burned me, even if I didn't have to pay from my own pocket for the medical bill.
Three little words: National Health Service. You need one. We need to defend ours from certain politicians trying to sell it off piecemeal to their crooked mates.
I know that people are talking about the hot coffee lawsuit, as they should be, but could we just take a bit of time to focus on how horrifying that clip at 9:20 is? He literally had an entire group of people kicking him on the ground and they STILL managed to turn the story against him. If we didn't have that dashcam footage I'm terrified of what would have become of his career...
Damn honestly I can't believe what a powerhouse he is, going through a civil lawsuit while getting his doctorate??
He didn't have enough time to obey before they rushed him.
American police "stop or we'll shoot"
British police "stop or we'll yell stop again"
Without the dashcam or anyone else recording he would've been tried as a criminal and reputation ruined. His career might not have ever happened. That's why cops also need to have bodycams on 24/7 while on duty just in case there's no one else recording
Literally cannot reform them. Abolish the police instead.
Whenever we hear about these "ridiculous lawsuits" against large corporations and believe them, we are swallowing pro-corporate propaganda whole cloth. We need to be better.
But. A lot of people are incredibly stupid... which is why propaganda has always and will always work.
Yes yes yes!
So much propaganda because basically they want to be able to do anything to us they want and have no accountability for it afterwards!
But fine with personal injury lawyer's counter-propaganda.
Some are truly frivolous (and often get tossed out as a result). Really people just need to be more attentive about looking deeper into the facts when a headline seems unbelievable.
The McDonald's coffee cup case being characterised as frivolous would be like calling the case where a woman had acid poured on her chips instead of salt "woman wins $250k for unsalted chips"
Please tell me that's not a real case
Same thing with the "sueing over napkins guy". He asked for more sauces and napkins and the employees harrassed him with racial slurs
I mean, is suing because someone calls you a racial slur really appropriate? Maybe complain up the chain first and give them a chance to remedy it...
@@Neurotik51 that's what people do before they sue
@@Neurotik51 yes. It is really appropriate.
@@Neurotik51 definitely appropriate.
@@poly.fcracka9362Unless you’re white. Then you don’t have that option….
Couldn’t like fast enough. The McDonald’s “Hot Coffee” lawsuit was so lambasted by smear campaigns that I have to continuously re-educate people who use it as an example of frivolous lawsuits.
Tort reform advocates are truly venomous.
I would not be surprised if i learned mcdonals spent more on making sure everyone thought that the woman was being ridiculous than they did paying the combined costs of all hot coffee lawsuits and settlements. When breaking the law is cheaper, that is what companies will do.
"re educate"
she put a hot beverage between her legs. Might aswell sue the car manufacturer for not including cup holders.
That's a lawsuit that can only fly in the US. The rest of the world will rightfully tell her and the hundreds of other people who do such a stupid thing that they did something stupid.
@@noneofyourbusiness4294 her argument wasn’t that McDonald’s caused her to spill her coffee on herself, it was that the coffee was being served at an unsafe temperature.
Or they knowingly sold a product at a much higher temperature than the industry average and that temperature was at the point where it could cause 3rd degree burns…
I’ve always hated how people who don’t even know the full details joke, bully and criticize people who decide to speak out or take a stand like that, so easily disregarding their pain.
It's strategy: "The small man can't be trusted so don't let him take Bigmoney to the court". It has worked wonders for Bigmoney.
It's easier to attack than to learn.
Not everyone is always aware that there is more to a story
"Let execs have their money because when you're rich someday you won't want people taking your money"
I'm never gonna have that kind of money in my life and neither are you. The biggest parlor trick the rich ever pulled was convincing poor people that other poor people are the problem
That's because they're not told the full story and just casually beleive what the media outlet tells them.
And when big money starts making an agressive PR campaign in their favor. It becomes an uphill battle to get the true circumstances of the event out.
I swear the amount of terrible things that Reagan is connected to continues to blow my mind
look up bill Clinton lol you're welcome
@@zazagone9574exactly, guy wants to act like Reagan is unique. Name a single president not connected to terrible things.
What McDonald's did to that poor old lady and the coffee temperature being served was absolutely horrendous, but what the media did to her was absolutely disgusting.
Yup, ruined a poor woman's life just to get a flashy headline. Animals.
You mean what that lady did to herself. Using your very flawed logic, that's like suing a restaurant for giving you hot soup that you asked, then burned your tongue on. She could've asked for warm coffee, which Mcdonalds did/does. Her handling of the entire situation was ridiculous.
@@vandalg282 Since you clearly don't know anything about the case, the lady didn't even want to sue, she just wanted her hospital bills covered because clearly the water was too hot if it can melt your damn skin
Pay attention, I know everything about the case since I've done a breakdown on my own channel. Learn some law for free; she could've said no.....she didn't. Now move on.
@@vandalg282 Oh wow, you also made a video covering one of the most popular cases in US history? Wow, that definitely makes your incredibly ridiculous and logically void opinion the end all be all. My mistake Mr. Professional UA-camr
As I recall, the real reason that McDonalds was found negligent (in addition to the dozens of other burn cases that they paid settlements on) was that they had made a corporate decision to serve the coffee at an outrageously hot temperature because they found that it reduced the number of refills people got, thus saving them money for second or third servings of coffee.
Yeah, it was too hot.
Because people had to wait an hour for it to cool down. I don't understand the popularity of McDonald's, I've had better fast food at similar prices from every other fast food chain.
Sounds similar to the ice cream machine conspiracy
@@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz4839 Aye man brother, The whopper single handedly trump's all of the sandwiches available at McDonald's.
Woah!!!!!
Good for Dr. Crosby. Being a victim of police brutality is never a good thing but he bounced back great, sued the city (get your money king), and became a doctor. What a legend
Fricking incredible. More power to him!
Agreed, what a resilient and inspiring dude. The world could use more like him.
i support the police but not this. How do you hurt the people you are supposed to protect but glad he become successful and got the money he deserved.
@@blakeherring4118 You shouldn’t. This is more commonplace than you think. Not trying to start a discussion but merely urging you to keep an open mind
I had to read this again. For moment there I thought Dr. COSBY. As in Spanish fly Bill. Some idiots refer that monster as "Dr".
The amount of people who still hate that old lady for suing McDonald's astounds me
The "she's crazy and careless" angle on the McDonald's lawsuit was all the work of their PR department, but she actually had a valid case. It's practically gained urban legend status.
Doubt it would fly nowadays. McDonalds must have a lot of politicians in their pocket
@@rompevuevitos222 Plus they would have moved swiftly to close whatever policy loopholes might allow another to do this.
true my mom told me about it a bit as a kid
That's because they had to pay her, and they changed the temperature of their coffee.
McDonald’s: * horrifically scalds woman’s legs*
Media: “lol”
McDonald’s Customer*: *horrifically scalds her own legs*
FTFY.
To be fair, I think the company had a fair portion of the fault, but just twenty percent for the litigant? It seems an open-shut 50/50 whereupon the remaining 30% was established to afford higher compensatory damages than might be justified had she not been an injured old woman adding emotive appeal to a jury versus a company whose figurehead is a literal nightmare-fuel clown.
@@TheAmbush101 If it was the only case of this happening I would agree with you, but given the fact that there where previous accounts of this and MCD didn't change anything, I feel like this judgements is just.
I actually had a high school law class that talked about this case and the teacher mocked this case HEAVILY and even said that the correct answer was that she gets nothing because of her own negligence in spilling the coffee ignoring the fact that normal coffee isnt supposed to make someone partially disabled for 2 years 😅😅
@@TheAmbush101 It was very much in McDonald's interest to subtly bad mouth the case and minimise the true nature of the case - and the media, (led by, oh what a surprise, the right wing), happily went along with it...fortunately the court heard the full evidence and went down the right track...
@@NtotheGMC Multiple people being negligent with the same product doesn't magically erase their negligence.
Regarding the Crosby story: Cop often shout "stop resisting" when beating someone who is not resisting. They do so to give the impression person is resisting in case witnesses are around. The presumption is that they would not be yelling this in the case of someone who is not resisting. They yell this regardless.
Those are shitty cops then
@@SurprisinglyDeep sadly too many cops are like that
@@epicgaming7813 I mean, one is too many, so that’s not saying a whole lot.
@@nathen4171 lol I guess
Nah, usually the people resisting are screaming "I'm not resisting!" despite fighting back against the police, tensing up and refusing to lie on the ground and take their hands behind the back to be cuffed. This is called resisting btw.
That crosby case pisses me off soooo much and it really drives me absolutely insane that he has had his reputation tarnished.
When my brother was in law school, we were at a family dinner and my dad starts talking about "the lady who sued McDonald's because her coffee was *too hot* " and how people file ridiculous lawsuits and make companies put silly warning labels on products.
My brother then explained what ACTUALLY happened to the lady, who got seriously scalded (haven't watched the video yet, don't remember exact details) and had to go to the hospital for severe burns. He detailed what McDonald's did wrong, and why she was right to sue.
It was one of the coolest conversations I'd ever seen, and it changed the way i thought about laws, lawsuits, and warning labels (good name for a band, btw)
Yeah, people keep on about how warning labels are somehow a bad thing.
Did your dad change his mind when presented with all the facts?
@@pridelander06 surprisingly, yes, for that one case at least. He probably didn't change the mindset that made him assume the lady was a freeloader. Can't win em all!
The fact that multi billion dollar companies or the president can besmirch your reputation permanently because of misleading legal cases is genuinely infuriating
Welcome in our world, where it's possible that big corporations will take over goverments and we will end up in Cyberpunk reality...
And scary wary
@@michasokoowski6651 Cyberpunk future is becoming more and more likely nowadays.
@@connormacleod4922 People were on this way before cyberpunk.
@@ellarweegadsden8483 True to an extent.
I think the one that bothers me the most is the suing the kid, cause it's just so easy to use the just as sensational headline "state law forces aunt to sue kid to receive treatment from insurance company" or something like that, folks punch up not down!
THAT’S the one that bothers you most?! 👀
@@courtney-ray Eh, it's a valid point. These headlines could've supported the actual victims in these situations, but the writers were too busy agreeing with conservatives who decided to focus on how the victim was to blame.
- "McDonalds' Coffee Causes 3rd Degree Burns" becomes "Woman Spills Coffee On Herself."
- "Police Assault Black Man And Arrest Under False Pretenses" becomes "Man Steals His Own Car."
- "Connecticut Law Forces Aunt To Sue 8 Year Old To Claim Insurance" becomes "AuntieChrist Sues Child."
These stories could've inspired more positive change and raised awareness to the shit going on in this country if those in the media had done anything but victim-blame.
@@tracyblanchard7663 I think OP's point was specifically that what *actually* happened could have led to an equally sensationalist headline as the ones they ran, but they still chose to misrepresent the case and harm everyone involved.
Not really, even if all her medical bills were covered by her own insurance she still had time off work, had her life made harder for a few months and deserved compensation for that as the injury was caused by someone else's negligence. It's not even state law really, in pretty much all of Europe nobody can sue an insurance company (unless it's yours) because there is no contract between the parties. The insurance company is there to indemnify the policy holder against the policy terms. So you have to sue the policy holder whose insurance company will then take over the case and sort it on their behalf.
I knew a chap at university who sued his own father after being in a car accident while the father was driving. There was no animosity between the two and the father encouraged his son to bring the case knowing he had insurance cover.
a woman got into an accident and a pedestrian saved her by giving her CPR. She sued her saviour for breaking her ribcage when giving her CPR and demanded compensation.
Real story: she wanted to claim insurance money to pay her medical bill but just like the Aunt had to name and sue her newphew. she also had to sue her saviour to claim insurance money. she did it out of formality. there was no bad blood or greed.
Isn't that how to Good Samaritan laws came into effect? It's sad that insurance companies force people to do this. :(
Imagine almost dying in a horrific accident due to the negligence of multiple parties, losing a limb and all around having your life forever changed...
..and then the president of the united states goes on air to basically just shit talk you to the nation.
people actually still praise the shit talking president to this day
@@Jacob-zk1jy Not as many as you'd think though. the left hates him for obvious reasons, the right hates him for similar reasons (Including racial tendencies like disarming the black population) as well as skyrocketing the price of NFA items. He sucked...
@@Mrjohnnymoo1 oh i thought republicans loved reagan
@@IgnatiaWildsmith1227 Only for at that time. Just a right man in right time.
Other than that, his legacy kinda suck
@@bocahdongo7769 I know kid who used Reaganomics as a logical defense for fracking in a presentation. Cause the trickle down system definitely works
as a former McD employee, we actually had to talk about this case during orientation. And why McD was at fault, and the steps they took to improve. basically, the coffee was made too hot for human consumption on the ideology that ppl waiting till they were at work/home to drink so by then the coffee would have cooled to a point of acceptable temp to drink while still being hot. Basically the temp was above scalding hot. they since lowered the temp and added the label.
So if I want to drink the coffee right then and there or on my way to work, I'd just burn my lips off? 🤔
Another person said it reduces the number of refills customers request. I think that answer sounds more like it.
@@TomikaKelly Though couldn’t they just have a policy of no refills on coffee?
@@TomikaKelly How you get refill from the drive through, which was where most sales for coffee took place? What Aza Dalamiq said is correct. McDonald's made assumptions about customer behavior without bothering to check whether the assumption was true.
@@TomikaKelly It's more this than that but McD's isn't going to admit that at orientation
@@beeaggro2593 I mean would they admit they did it mainly for profits even though we know it alreadt? I think the guys who said McD did that to discourage refills and to keep coffee for longer periods of time had a point.
The Crosby car theft case is actually terrifying, all jokes aside.
racism am i right
@@lashdams1969 no, you're wrong. It's actually msicar.
It is
But at least he won the case
Freaking dog piled him!
It's not, US police brutality is way more brutal. The latest fad is to ask a black guy to show his driver's license and then shoot him when "he reached for the gun".
I watched the documentary about the McDonald's coffee case, 'Hot Coffee' and I felt soooo bad for the victim as well as angry about the lies from the media that manipulated me since I was a child. This was an elderly woman, given boiling hot coffee, THROUGH A DRIVE-THRU (who was then mocked for it for the rest of her life), and the injuries I saw were beyond horrific. I can't imagine how excruciating it was for her to experience not only the injury itself, but the subsequent treatments. 😢
The McDonald's case not only reduced the danger of too hot coffee but resulted in the new coffee lids which are much safer as well. No doubt that lawsuit saved a huge amount of pain and suffering.
It's a shame that someone had to suffer for that to happen. They could have served coffee at lower temperatures and used safer lids from the start. Reminds me of the aviation industry because it's really sad to think that some of the advanced safety features modern planes have were only added after an accident occured. But i understand the engineers can't think of everything.
@@_invencible_ If you've ever watched "Seconds From Disaster," you learn a good majority of our safety procedures are because the worst scenario happened.
Yeah or regulations in general are made because people have done some really stupid things. Like some sign may say "Don't do X" and most people reading the sign would think it's obvious not to do it, however, at some point someone did it to cut down on costs and people got injured or killed.
@@_invencible_ The reason they brewed it so hot was to make it cheaper for them. The hotter water makes the coffee stronger, so they could use less beans per pot.
Greed was part of this suit, but the greed was 100% McDonald’s.
@@rendajones7368 i'm tired of hearing that. They could brew it as hot as they wanted but they had to wait for it to cool down before serving. It's not rocket science
Coverage: Ridiculous lawsuits!
Should be coverage: Everyone has to sue because healthcare costs are insane.
and insurance company's will try and weasel their way out of paying where they can.
*laugh in french*
@@loicdeniel8361 cries in American
@@loicdeniel8361 on hon hon
It’s not just the healthcare though, people still sue (though, granted, just not as often) in countries with universal healthcare because loss of earnings is also a massive issue.
I can't help but notice how many of these cases involve medical bills that the victim couldn't afford. Let's face it. The reason we see so many "weird" lawsuits in America has less to do with the American legal system and more to do with the American healthcare system.
We need to band together for the destruction of the health insurance industry and to sew the pockets up of hospital business people who decide what the charge master reads.
Dr. Mike should have a say in this 2
As someone who also got third degree burns across my entire lap (from boiling water while making tea as a teenager), i’ve always had a lot of sympathy for the McDonald’s coffee lady.
From that radio snippet: "Every day we hear about ridiculous lawsuits"
Yes, that might be because you make them sound ridiculous to turn them into spicier stories.
If they gotta be dishonest, they could at least be self aware about it.
A lot of this crap comes up in trademark law, where we often hear about stupid trademark lawsuits because trademark law requires the owners to be very protective
The radio snippet wasn't a news story; it was an ad by the tort reform lobby.
the entire right-wing media premise: "every day you hear about ___. true, it is because we tell you about it, and we are lying. but still, someone should probably do something about it"
@@SamAronow nobody called it a news story
@Luís Andrade preachhhh
If you think conservatives are going to be honest, I don't know what to tell you. There's a pile of half a million corpses from last year they're still lying about. We watched them let thousands of people die preventable deaths, and all they did during that time was selectively deny respirators and ppe to blue states. They're monsters, plain and simple, and they always have been.
So al these “frivolous” lawsuits come from people needing to sue to cover their medical bills?
This explains why we don’t hear or see as much of these in other countries where everyone has a (mandated) basic health insurance?
Ah yes because obviously health insurance is going to stop the police from arresting you for no reason and fix 3rd degree burns that permanently damaged your body.
@@manbabymonke it wont help the burns but it would certainly help the burns on your wallet.
@@manbabymonke did you watch the video. She only requested McDonald's pay her medical bill. As a the case with the Aunt. But nice cherry picking.
@@laartwork does that make my comment wrong? Regardless of your health insurance you would still sue the company if you got permanently crippled. You should be applauding yourself for cherry picking.
@@laartwork well while that lady only sued to medical bills, a different personality type would have sued for the permanent damage done. She also stated she wanted them to reduce how hot their coffee was so nobody else got burned so bad
This is a good breakdown of why those cases weren't frivolous, but also, if the cost of being able to hold large corporations accountable is a few frivolous suits, I won't love any sleep over it.
Yes. Let's remember who benefits from "tort reform". It ain't the little guy with a genuine grievance.
So many of these lawsuits wouldn't exist if the US had proper healthcare
Universal healthcare isn't the miracle everyone thinks it is. It definitely shouldn't be as expensive as it is but it being free leads to longer wait times for all medical treatments including life saving procedures where ppl often die waiting, less medical supplies and medication, less healthcare professionals in all fields, etc.
So, I went through Crew Trainer and Manager training at McDonald's, and they actually teach you about the hot coffee case. They specifically teach you that McDonald's was unambiguously in the wrong and how to avoid causing trouble like that again.
I'm shocked to be honest
But they can’t do that in the public because reasons or something
@@because_raisins Part of it is admitting fault and the politics/legality thereof. Part of it is society wanting sensationalist news.
Do things in public that can hurt your image? Big corporations doing that would be a welcome surprise, but unlikely.
Of course they teach you that, can you imagine the PR disaster if they didn't?
That McDonald's coffee lawsuit breaks my heart when you realize how badly McD's PR team bullied that woman
it’s so sad :/ I feel so bad for the woman she’s precious
@@user-op8fg3ny3j Capital protects capital
Not just the company. Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh who favor shielding corporations from liability both had and still have a field day with her. I'm sure if you ask someone like Ben Shapiro or Tucker Carlson you'll hear the same screed about the "greedy old geezer who burned herself with coffee" today.
@@BigMikeMcBastard lol about Ben Shapiro.. with a background like his, he ought to watch himself ridiculing greed.
Good thing it was only around the US(I'm not in US), because the 1st time I read about the case, the writer included 3rd degree burns.
For the McDonalds case: I have met people who, after being met with the facts, still struggle to find her at fault, stating that "she could have lied" (even after the 700+ reports of McDonalds settling similar cases) and that she wasn't that burned (suggesting she had a surgeon perform a needless operation, even though it would have cost the surgeon's license).... Kinda sad really
The facts are pretty clear, I don't know why people try to argue about them.
Tort law is very complex and you can have a lot of debating on how to decide responsibility for an accident. There's no simple rule there so it's always complicated. You very rarely have someone who is clearly 100% wrong (at least it rarely goes to trial).
People just don't like the idea that they were being bandwagoning idiots on some poor women based on misinformation and ignorance, so to smother the guilt they go into denial even though its nonsensical
Pride. No body likes being proven wrong
How could anyone believe such nonsense. She is so elderly an operation would be super dangerous. She actually died a few years later because she was never the same after the accident.
There is research showing that once a person establishes a viewpoint, it's very difficult to change. They did a study telling people some BS facts, then 5 minutes later they said, "That was all wrong, made up, those aren't the real facts." Then they give them a test, and people still believe the BS facts!! Even just knowing something for just 5 minutes, people have a VERY hard time changing their minds. Imagine how hard it is to change beliefs they've had for a lifetime.
I live in germany and The McDonalds coffe accident was in our news too.
Like always the information given to us was not complete - we only knew that the "crazy" americans can sue companies for everything and that a person got burned with a cup of coffee and that McDonalds was sued for an amount of some million dollars.
Because of all that missing info my take on it was that the person was drinking the coffee and got burned in the throat.
Thank you very much for all that missing information.
I was going to make a comment along those lines. If the public opinion is misinformed about the case in the US, you can only guess how we are handled the news in other countries. Being in France at the time, i heard the same thing. I remember one of the urban legend of the time was that some American put a cat in the microwave and sued after the death of the cat.
one of the worst things about this countries media is the constant headline culture we have here, not wanting to show the full story and always trying to portray things in ridiculous manners or absurdist terms. The truth is that sometimes the media and its sensationalization of modern America creates negative stereotypes that other countries judge us and our citizens by
I‘m from Germany, too, and that „crazy Americans“ angle was the only thing I ever heard in the media. When my dad told me that the coffee was so hot that it burned her legs up, I had a hard time believing it, because why would the mainstream news not include this? But, that’s my dad, always interested in details.
On the other hand, „burnt up legs“ isn’t even close to the reality, so I wonder how much detail he was actually able to find out… It sounds horrible enough with that description, but hearing all the details is a real-life horror story.
Man, Americans did us such a disservice by inventing the 24/7/365 news cycle. What the heck were you THINKING?
@@ArDeeMeetbh I think most of us regret it too. Sorry.
Yea, like a house bruning in i think Ohio made news in India(not even international channels)@@ArDeeMee
The last case (where the woman sued her nephew) reminds me of another one that I heard of on some podcast: a big-rig truck driver hit a car and killed the child. Clearly the truck driver's fault, parents tried to move on. Two year later the truck driver had to sue the parents because of some insurance mess, because otherwise he couldn't get the assistance he needed for the PTSD. It was horrible all around.
"Had to" There were no other choices? Couldn't sue the insurance company? Couldn't take a long walk down a short pier?
Seriously? At the point where you've already victimized someone in the most severe way to than think your psychological wellness outweighs that of your victims' is straight-up sociopathic. Demanding your victims pay for the supposed "psychological pain" of YOU having victimized THEM. There's just no excuse for that.
@@SpaceBearEngineer > Couldn't take a long walk down a short pier?
Lovely person you are too, telling people to off themselves in preference to seeking healthcare. Yikes.
@@SpaceBearEngineer That's not cool. The guy shouldn't have tried to sue the family of the parents of the child he killed. Honestly if anything, that would probably only make that guilt worse and doesn't paint a good picture of him to say the least.
But still, that's a horrible thing to say about someone and I hope you reconsider your take there.
Edit: it might be another case of having to sue the person who injured him bc it's illegal to sue the insurance company. Still not great.
Reminds me of one that hit me. Big Econoline van speeding around a blind corner. I was in the wrong because I had a stop sign, even though he was speeding and not visible in time. T-boned me from the passenger side. I was injured by the passenger side door folding over the seat and slamming into me in the driver's side. I had a concussion and at the scene of the wreck I was unable to move my legs. His kid had slid out of the seatbelt and cut his lip when his teeth hit the dash (kid was young enough he should have been sitting in the back seat). He and the kid were otherwise fine. A year later, I get a notice I'm being sued because he couldn't perform in bed for his wife anymore.
@@NecrochildK Was it because of the flawed legal system to get insurance, or did he just sue you? (Sorry it happened at all though.)
It seems like "paying medical bills" is a reason why some people _have_ to sue. So glad that we have the NHS.
Long may it remain
Very true
I do hope it stays that way.
When I was in 7th grade I had some complications with a duct. I had a stent put in me. It almost bankrupted my family. Took 6 years to get paid off. I can not stress how broken our healthcare system is in the US
I don’t want my tax money to pay for stupid people’s mistakes
For those who don't know why the officer yelled, "Stop resisting!", the answer is simple: It's a way to cover their ass. If they yell "Stop resisting!", they can claim that you fought back, which is how he was charged. It is an unfortunately common practice and it one that works on far too many observers and commentators.
That is the most infuriating thing I've noticed in recent years with police videos.
I've seen this in videos and it makes me ragey.
Fortunately it's much harder for cops to get away with nowadays since there are cameras everywhere including bodycams on cops, this case is proof of that, without cameras he would have been screwed.
Its also likely that most people are involuntarily resisting. You get thrown to the ground, your instinct is to put your hands out. If police are holding them, you are going to pull away to catch yourself. Its also very hard to relax you muscles when your arms are being wrenched backwards. Then add on all the psychology of cops not explaining themselves in many instances, just grabbing on your and tossing you around after verballing abusing you...
@@RPostWVU Right, exactly. They wrench your arm in an uncomfortable position where it feels like it's about to pop out of its socket (and probably is), you involuntarily move to prevent this, and you're "resisting."
I feel like a lot of those cases didn't even happen if the USA had a decent healthcare system...
Also thank you so much for talking about the McDonald's case, it annoys me so much when people bring it up as something ridiculously dumb without knowing any context.
Their pahetic attempt at humor is far more rewarding to them than truth, justice and a responsable society.
Wait, the phone company who negligently placed a phone booth in a known dangerous spot with a broken door, didn't pay anything?? But the race track who served alcohol did? That's seems messed up.
It is.
Even the original headline didn't seem that absurd to me. If the phone booth was defective and didn't allow him to escape, of course there is culpability and negligence from the phone company.
My thoughts exactly. This is totally wrong!
Imagine if the store selling booze was sued every time someone was stupid enough to drive drunk! Or if the pharma company got sued every time someone got in a car on pills they shouldn't drive on. That is just absurd, haha.
How was the race track supposed to know that the person they served alcohol to would go on to crash into and fatally injure someone whilst drunk?
When I was a child, while playing "cops and robbers", (me as a cop), one kid insisted he had to pretend to commit a crime. I then told him he was "under arrest for resisting arrest", because I thought it was funny. He argued that I couldn't arrest him for that and he had to pretend to commit a REAL crime.
I thought it was funny. I now wish my joke had been wrong as we both assumed.
america is a goddamn hellhole when it comes to the law
@@sarafontanini7051 and the rich get richer
@@sarafontanini7051 except for rich white people of all political denominations
@@dustin202 yeah the 10 rich guys get richer
Everybody else has pretty much no chance of getting rich
@@accountlol7409 exactly, the rich
I had completely forgotten about the Crosby case where he was assaulted for “stealing” his own car. I of course had only heard the ridiculous versions! Thank you for clearing that case up, I’m realizing that I need to rethink a few of my stances on suing/what makes a frivolous lawsuit.
@Luís Andrade don't believe a well sourced video by an expert in the field. Much better to just trust your vague feelings you picked up through cultural osmosis. Literal baby brain shit.
@Luís Andrade then surely you can cite an example from the video rather than telling someone not to rethink their opinions with empty generic words
@@Adamdidit he's just an upper class troll...
The truth is nearly all frivolous lawsuits end in failure for the plaintiff. If they won a bunch of money, the chances are the lawsuit was not frivolous at all.
@Luís Andrade
Politicians seeking to protect their shareholders from liability are the one that have the greatest ability to lie and serve their own self interest. The video demonstrates this well, pointing out politicians deliberately manipulating the public in order to sway people like you who do not care about the facts.