In what reads like a press release from John Edwards and/or ATLA (the trial lawyer group), the Daily Kos features a ringing defense of the verdict in Stella Liebeck's suit against McDonalds. You don't remember Stella? She was the woman who successfully sued McDonalds after she spilled coffee on herself. The Kosites think it was just peachy for Stella to get paid off. After all, they argue, (1) McDonald's had received 700 previous complaints and (2) Liebeck suffered serious injuries.
Unlike the folks at Kos, the good folks at Overlawyered.com have the straight dope on Ms. Leibeck:
By the way, there are at least two factual errors in the Kos post. First, Stella was 79 when she was hurt not 81. Second, her medical costs apparently were $20,000 - the amount she originally sought - not $200,000. Support here.
By the way (#2), Stella's case prompted an internet hoax called the Stella Awards, which in turn prompted a website that gives the True Stella Awards.
By the way (3), a comment at Kos points "out that all trial lawyers aren't the same, that Edwards had nothing to do with the frivolous lawsuits we sometimes hear about, and that he's won money for helpless kids disembowelled by known-defective products." Not quite right. As The Washington Times explained:
Unlike the folks at Kos, the good folks at Overlawyered.com have the straight dope on Ms. Leibeck:
To say that there were 700 previous complaints of burns (ranging from scalds to real injuries) from McDonald's coffee begs the question. After all, 700 is just the numerator. What's the denominator? The answer is in the tens of billions. A product that hurts one in twenty-four million people is not "unreasonably dangerous", especially when the vast majority of the 700 incidents were not the sort of grievous injuries Ms. Liebeck had. (McDonald's had settled previous cases, but the cases were incidents where the McDonald's employees had spilled the coffee.) However, the jury took the 1-in-24 million statistic not as evidence that McDonald's coffee was not dangerous, but as evidence that McDonald's cared more about statistics than people -- when in fact the statistic should have been used to throw the case out.
That Ms. Liebeck was surely serious hurt doesn't change the underlying problem with the lawsuit: Ms. Liebeck was hurt because she spilled coffee on herself. If (as all fast-food restaurants do now) McDonald's had the obvious statement "Coffee is hot and can burn you" on the cup (a juror later complained that McDonald's warning was too small), would that have prevented her injuries? True: McDonald's could have served luke-warm coffee or even iced coffee. But at the end of the day, the proximate cause of Ms. Liebeck's injuries, as awful as they were, was Ms. Liebeck.
The argument for liability is that McDonald's chose to serve its coffee hot and should have foreseen that people would burn themselves when they spilled coffee. But, here's a question: the reason Ms. Liebeck's injuries were so terrible was because she was wearing a sweatsuit that absorbed the hot liquid and held it close to her skin. Surely, clothing manufacturers can foresee that people will spill hot liquids on themselves. If Ms. Liebeck's sweatpants had been made out of Gore-Tex or some other liquid-resistant material, she never would have been hurt. What's the principle of tort law that holds McDonald's liable, but not the clothing manufacturer?You got me. (More at Thoughts Online.)
By the way, there are at least two factual errors in the Kos post. First, Stella was 79 when she was hurt not 81. Second, her medical costs apparently were $20,000 - the amount she originally sought - not $200,000. Support here.
By the way (#2), Stella's case prompted an internet hoax called the Stella Awards, which in turn prompted a website that gives the True Stella Awards.
By the way (3), a comment at Kos points "out that all trial lawyers aren't the same, that Edwards had nothing to do with the frivolous lawsuits we sometimes hear about, and that he's won money for helpless kids disembowelled by known-defective products." Not quite right. As The Washington Times explained:
Mr. Edwards earned a considerable portion of his millions on cerebral palsy cases. Cerebral palsy is a set of debilitating diseases that impair movement. The muscular disorders — which can include involuntary movements and difficulties with many motor tasks, ranging from walking to writing — are caused by damage to or faulty development of the motor areas of the brain. Until the 1980s, many medical professionals believed that damage could be caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain during delivery. As a consequence, Mr. Edwards was able to successfully sue doctors who did not demand Caesarean deliveries as soon as the infant's fetal monitor suggested that it was short of oxygen.
Yet, even as Mr. Edwards was perfecting his science of suing, evidence was growing that the blame was misplaced. Studies demonstrated that most of the children who developed the disease had brain damage well before they were born. Scientists now believe that, like other brain disorders, cerebral palsy has a wide variety of causes, which likely include both genetic and environmental factors.
As a consequence of the expensive efforts made by Mr. Edwards and his fellow malpractice practitioners, doctors often rush to perform Caesarean sections, with rates rising from 6 percent of births in 1970 to 26 percent today. Yet rates of cerebral palsy have remained stable in populations, regardless of how many Caesarean sections are performed.
That led the New York Times to point out in a Jan. 31 article, "There is a growing medical debate over whether the changes have done more harm than good." More harm is likely. Ceasarean sections are major surgery, putting both mother and infant at significant risk. Mr. Edwards claims he acted on behalf of helpless victims, but the costly claims made by Mr. Edwards and other lawyers have driven doctors away from some areas of practice, taking their care and cures elsewhere.
