From severe burns to a $2.7 million jury award, the infamous hot coffee lawsuit held McDonald’s accountable—and turned the country against an innocent woman. Here’s the real story.
Here’s What Really Happened in McDonald’s Hot Coffee Lawsuit
You’ve probably heard of the McDonald’s hot coffee lawsuit. It’s the case where a woman sued McDonald’s because her coffee was too hot. Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants is often cited as the poster child for ridiculous legal cases where people sued fast food chains, but there’s a lot more to this story than most people realize.
Yes, hot coffee was spilled. But this wasn’t a case of a customer overreacting or looking to make a quick buck by suing a multinational corporation—despite what the media said at the time. The burns were third-degree, and McDonald’s had already received hundreds of similar complaints, many of which never made headlines.
Ahead, we break down what really happened, why this case changed how McDonald’s serves coffee and how it sparked a larger conversation about product safety and corporate responsibility.
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Facts about the hot coffee lawsuit
On Feb. 27, 1992, Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old widow, was in the passenger seat of her grandson’s Ford Probe, ordering a Value Meal at the drive-thu window of an Albuquerque, New Mexico, McDonald’s. Since there were no cup holders in the Probe and the interior surfaces were sloped, her grandson, Christopher Tiano, pulled into a parking spot after they got their order.
“I wanted to take the top off the coffee to put cream and sugar in,” Liebeck told a local news station at the time. “So I put the cup between my knees to steady it [as I tried] to get the top off.”
“And after that,” says Tiano, “she started screaming.”
The coffee spilled on Liebeck’s lap, resulting in second- and third-degree burns over 16% of her body. She went into shock and was hospitalized for a week, undergoing numerous skin graft operations.
“I’m a nurse, and I was horrified by the type of injuries that she had sustained,” said Liebeck’s daughter-in-law, Barbara Liebeck.
Why Liebeck decided to sue McDonald’s
When Liebeck’s medical bills hit $20,000, she contacted McDonald’s and asked to be reimbursed.
“We couldn’t believe that this much damage could happen over spilled coffee,” Liebeck’s daughter, Judy Allen, said in Scalded by Coffee, Then News Media, a 2013 New York Times documentary about the case. “We wrote a letter to McDonald’s asking them to check the temperature of the coffee and to give recompense for the medical bills.”
That’s right: Liebeck’s letter to the fast-food giant wasn’t just about staving off medical debt. It was also about the danger McDonald’s coffee posed to other customers. “We said, ‘Your machine must be too hot, so look at it and fix it if it’s broken,’ ” said Liebeck’s son-in-law, Charles Allen. “It must be an aberration. But if that’s your policy, we ask you to worry about your policy.”
McDonald’s responded with an offer of $800.
That’s when Liebeck contacted a lawyer. After attempts to settle out of court failed, she sued McDonald’s, citing physical and mental pain, anguish and loss of life’s enjoyment. Her argument: The coffee was dangerously hot.
How hot McDonald’s coffee got
At the time, McDonald’s required its franchises to brew its coffee at 195 to 205 degrees and sell it at 180 to 190 degrees, far warmer than the coffee made by most home coffee-brewing machines. That meant that “the coffee in question was brewed at temperatures that would approximate the temperature in your car’s radiator after you drive from your office to home,” said one of Liebeck’s lawyers, Ken Wagner.
During the trial, Liebeck’s surgeon, David Arredondo, MD, told the jury that if liquid at that temperature makes contact with skin for more than a few seconds, it will cause very serious burns. “If you’re lucky, it will produce second-degree burns,” he said. “If you’re not as lucky, you will get third-degree or full-thickness burns requiring skin grafting and surgery.” Jurors saw graphic photos of Liebeck’s burned groin and skin grafts as a visual example of the injuries described.
What to know about the hot coffee lawsuit trial
It’s been more than three decades, yet Liebeck’s story is still largely misunderstood. Here’s what you need to know to get the full picture:
The coffee was extra hot on purpose
The company had a reason for requiring McDonald’s employees to serve coffee at that temperature, reported the Wall Street Journal: It tasted better. Coffee experts assured the company that “hot temperatures are necessary to fully extract the flavor during brewing.”
McDonald’s blamed the victim
McDonald’s reps suggested that the blame lay with Liebeck for holding the cup between her legs. They also claimed she should have removed her clothing immediately after the spill. They further argued that Liebeck’s age may have worsened her injuries since older skin is thinner and more vulnerable to burns.
Hundreds of customers had been burned
The trial revealed that Liebeck was not alone. McDonald’s had received more than 700 complaints about burns from hot beverages over the previous 10-year period.
The defense countered that the number of complaints was statistically insignificant, given the billions of cups of McDonald’s coffee sold annually. But that argument didn’t sit well with jurors.
“There was a person behind every number, and I don’t think the corporation was attaching enough importance to that,” juror Betty Farnham told the Wall Street Journal.
Liebeck got more than she asked for
After seven days of testimony and four hours of deliberation, the jurors sided with Liebeck. They awarded her $200,000 in compensatory damages. But because she caused the spill, they reduced the amount to $160,000.
The jurors then awarded her $2.7 million in punitive damages, which, they reasoned, was equivalent to about two days’ worth of McDonald’s coffee sales. That brought the total to far more than Liebeck had originally requested.
“The only way you can get the attention of a big company [is] to make punitive damages against them,” said juror Marjorie Getman. “And we thought this was a very small punitive damage.”
The trial judge later reduced the amount to about $480,000, calling McDonald’s actions “willful, wanton and reckless.” Nevertheless, “I think the initial award certainly got everybody’s attention, not necessarily in a favorable way,” said Farnham.
How the media turned the country against her
As Scalded by Coffee, Then News Media showed, although the original Albuquerque Journal article about the trial ran at 700 words, later wire-service articles were much shorter and omitted key details. In the end, all that most people knew about the case came from the headlines and late-night talk shows.
“When you read, ‘Woman’ … ‘Coffee’ … ‘Millions’ … it sounds like a rip-off,” said John Llewellyn, a professor of communication at Wake Forest University. “Not the logical consequence of a thoughtful trial.”
Liebeck quickly became fodder for the media frenzy that followed:
- “I’ve been thinking of quitting work here and suing big companies for a living instead. Suing has become a popular American pastime, and I’d like to get in on some of that easy money.” —CBS News correspondent Andy Rooney
- “Every minute they waste on this frivolous lawsuit, they’re not able to waste on other frivolous lawsuits! ‘Oooh, my coffee was too hot.’ It’s coffee!” —Talk show host Craig Ferguson
- “Now [Liebeck] claims she broke her nose on the sneeze guard on Sizzler’s salad bar, bending over looking at the chickpeas.” —Late-night TV host Jay Leno
Politicians jumped on the bandwagon:
- “If a lady goes to a fast-food restaurant, puts coffee in her lap, burns her legs and sues and gets a big settlement, that in and of itself is enough to tell you why we need tort reform.” —former U.S. representative John Kasich of Ohio
Public opinion was swayed.
- During man-in-the-street interviews for the documentary Hot Coffee, one woman said of Liebeck, “People are greedy and want money. They’ll do anything to get it.”
- A man said, “The woman purchased the coffee and spilled it on herself. It wasn’t like the McDonald’s employee took the coffee and threw it on her.”
Of course, the hot coffee lawsuit isn’t the only case that’s raised eyebrows in pop culture. But what makes this so shocking in hindsight is that a legitimate lawsuit was twisted to turn the victim into a villain.
The family’s reaction
Her family, understandably, was appalled. “I am just astounded at how many people are aware of this case and how many people have a distorted view of the case,” said daughter Judy. “I’ll say, ‘What if I told you she wasn’t driving?’ and they’ll say, ‘Oh, no, she was driving.’”
Liebeck’s daughter-in-law, Barbara, was just as horrified. “I’ve heard people say she was asking for $30 million or something equally ridiculous,” she said. “Basically, Stella told McDonald’s, ‘I want you to cover what Medicare doesn’t cover, and I want you to get a better lid on that coffee because I don’t want this to happen to another person.’ That was what she was asking for.”
That message was lost in all the chatter. “Once everybody decides what is true about something and the media has been sort of an echo chamber for it, then how do you deal with the fact that they might be wrong?” said Llewellyn. “That Stella Liebeck needed to defend her reputation is the saddest piece of this whole story to me.”
Liebeck said as much at the time. “I was not in it for the money,” she said. “I was in it because I want them to bring the temperature down so that other people wouldn’t go through the same thing I did.”
The final outcome
Liebeck never regained the strength and energy she had before she was burned. She passed away in 2004, at the age of 91.
McDonald’s now serves its coffee at a temperature roughly 10 degrees lower. Since the lawsuit, people have pursued hot coffee claims in fast-food scandals against not only McDonald’s but also Burger King, Dunkin’, Starbucks and others.
The next time someone rolls their eyes at the mention of the “hot coffee lawsuit,” you’ll know it’s more than just a punch line. It’s a reminder of how one case reshaped product safety—and how a misunderstood story can take on a life of its own.
Sources:
- American Museum of Tort Law: “Liebeck v. McDonald’s”
- Georgia Trial Lawyers Association: “The McDonald’s Scalding Coffee Case”
- Consumer Attorneys of California: “The McDonald’s Hot Coffee Case”
- Texas Trial Lawyers Association: “McDonalds’ Hot Coffee Case – Read the Facts NOT the Fiction”
- The New York Times: “Scalded by Coffee, Then News Media”
- Newspapers.com: “McDonald’s Settles Coffee-Burn Suit”
- The Wall Street Journal: “A Matter of Degree: How a Jury Decided That a Coffee Spill Is Worth $2.9 Million”
Originally Published in Reader's Digest
