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On February 27, 1992, Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old woman from Albuquerque, New Mexico, ordered a 49 cent cup of coffee from the drive-through of a local McDonald’s. This triggered one of the most controversial and disputed cases in the history of law. Stella was at the passenger seat and her grandson was driving. After he parked the car, she placed the cup between her knees, opened it to add cream and sugar and accidentally spilled the entire cup on coffee on her lap. The hot liquid gave her third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent. She spent $11.000 and required two years of treatment. Naturally she tried to blame someone and the only candidate was the McDonalds Corporation, so a lawsuit followed.

In 1994 after the treatment was over Stella tried to settle with McDonald’s for US $20.000 (which was actually more than she spent on the doctors). The corporation refused and it was the biggest failure of McLawyers because Stella hired an attorney and sued McDonalds for “gross negligence” and selling coffee that was “unreasonably dangerous” and “defectively manufactured.” The whole case would probably be turned down by the court, but the lawyers discovered an interesting detail that became a cornerstone of the case.

The rules of the McDonalds franchise set the appropriate temperature of coffee at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C) while in most of the other restaurants serve the coffee at lower temperatures. The McLawyers responded that the higher temperature is a must for a drive-through, where the people need additional time to park their car before consuming the coffee. After lot of heated arguments for and against hot coffee the case went to trial. A jury decided that McDonald’s had 80% of the fault and Liebeck the other 20%. The jury confirmed that the cup had a hazard warning but it was not large enough and not sufficient.

The huge sum that came up in the trial had a funny history. Stellas’ attorney Reed Morgan suggested that McDonalds should be o penalized for one or two days’ worth of coffee revenues and the revenues were about $1.35 million per day. The jury accepted this offer and added another $200.000 as compensatory damages, which were later reduced to $160.000 and formed the historical 2.86 dollar coffee burn. Of course the trial judge lowered the whole sum to $640.00. Finally both parties settled out of court for an undisclosed amount less that $600.000, a big failure if we compare it to the twenty thousand as the first sum, but a big success compared to the two and a half million before the trial.

As for the consequences of this historical case, except for a heated discussion, the case triggered a tort reform in the United States. Also the Stella Awards were founded, these awards are given to people who file the most outrageous and frivolous lawsuits. As always lot of the people continue to see this situation as ridiculous.