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Hot Java, the Media and Outrageous Outputs
So-called "legal legends," accounts of huge damage awards by juries, have captured media attention and given the impression that the courts are out of control. The importance and number of outrageous awards are distorted, much to the delight of a business-supported movement to pass legislation limiting lawsuits. Puget Sound Professor of Politics and Government William Haltom argues that consistently far-fetched accounts of court rulings have warped the truth. By WILLIAM HALTOM
Never heard of the woman, you say? Don’t answer until you read this news capsule: ALBUQUERQUE (August 18, 1994) -- A jury today awarded an 81-year-old woman $2.7 million in punitive damages and $200,000 in compensatory damages after finding a McDonald’s restaurant negligently served a cup of coffee. Stella Liebeck purchased the coffee at a drive-through near her home and suffered third-degree burns after fumbling with a Styrofoam cup and spilling the contents in her lap. Liebeck’s attorney, Ken Wagner, said McDonald’s serves its coffee at 180 to 190 degrees, compared with coffee made at home, which has a temperature of 135 to 140 degrees. Now do you now recognize Ms. Liebeck? Her court victory made an episode of "Seinfeld," Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" monologue, and a commercial for a long-distance phone company. Five years later, the Internet, talk-radio, and conversations among colleagues and co-workers still are rife with jokes about how to spill coffee on yourself for fun and profit. The problem was, thanks to the media coverage, the big payoff was less than half the story.
At the outset, legitimate news At least two features of the verdict made the Liebeck-McDonald's case news worthy. First, the size of the award marked Liebeck as the winner of a litigational lottery that pays off far less than other lotteries. When a person wins millions for an accident that has befallen nearly everyone, that is news. Second, the apparent frivolousness of the lawsuit reminded many of claims that Americans were lawsuit crazy and that jurors were a soft touch for plaintiffs' attorneys. Stella Liebeck became an icon, both for those who would reform civil litigation in the United States and for those who lamented the decline of personal responsibility. We can learn from the Liebeck case by examining its five phases. (Please keep in mind that, in general, cases about civil litigation do not have multiple phases. In fact, it is difficult enough for most cases to make the papers once!)
Phase 1: Lucky Liebeck [August 18-September 2, 1994] After the jury's award was announced, many newspapers immediately dispatched a story that they had not previously covered. This first stage shows the perils of cases that don’t surface until their conclusions, seizing readers' attention at the expense of accuracy and perspective. As reported in this largest wave of stories, jurors seemed to have awarded Liebeck nearly $3 million for spilling coffee on herself while driving away from a drive-through window. Readers could easily have concluded that Liebeck not only scalded herself through her own clumsiness but also that she then got greedy and, with the help of lawyers and jurors, ripped off a blameless McDonald's franchise. Little wonder that initial reactions evinced sympathy for McDonald's, anger with Liebeck and her attorneys, and disdain for the jury. Executives who blame their own failings on litigiousness had a scapegoat.
Phase 2: libeled Liebeck [September 3-14, 1994] Many of the inadequacies of the initial wave of coverage were addressed two weeks later when a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Andrea Gerlin, returned to the story and corrected some of the media’s misleading reports. While this second phase was carried by a fraction of the newspapers that covered the disgraceful "Lucky Liebeck" story, those who read Gerlin’s followup got a very different view of the matter. Might your sympathies change a little if you were aware that: • Liebeck was riding in the car, not driving? • The car was parked to the side of the lot before she opened her coffee? • She took the lid off her coffee to add cream and sugar? • McDonald's had had more than 700 complaints about the temperature of its coffee but continued to recommend in its manual that coffee be served at or above 175 degrees Fahrenheit? • Liebeck originally sought compensatory damages for third-degree burns on her legs and lap and pursued punitive damages only after McDonald's refused to pay her hospital bills? • The jurors awarded $2,700,000 against the McDonald's corporation because that sum represented two days' coffee sales and would induce McDonald's to serve safer coffee?
Phase 3: Liebeck loses [September 14-December 1, 1994] Stage Three started on September 14, 1994, when the judge at the trial reduced punitive damages to $480,000 to go with $160,000 compensation for medical bills, pain and permanent scarring. Such reductions are hardly unusual but are usually covered less than the original "outrages." Thus, even attentive readers and especially television viewers (because TV news is so capsulized) may miss the reductions and other adjustments of civil awards. If, for example, a huge punitive award gets the attention of the defendant but the defendant does not have to pay the award, citizens might conclude that the civil courts punish malingering and malfeasance without costing businesses, insurers and consumers a bundle. If, in contrast, citizens do not know about adjustments, they proceed with faulty information. This phase also reminds us that the jury's award does not end the case, but reports of post-verdict developments may not be as copious as reports of attention-grabbing awards. Even quite public outputs may never surface.
Phase 4: Stella settles [December 2-5, 1994] The settlement between Liebeck and McDonald's was covered even less than the third phase. This fourth stage of the Stella Liebeck saga was the actual end of the litigation. Relative to the outrageous verdict, however, this report was under-covered. Indeed, coverage of the fourth stage was about one-third that of the first. This alerts us to the fact that post-trial settlements may be barely more noticeable than pre-trial negotiations. And they often are just as secret. While Liebeck got far less from the settlement than the millions she had been awarded, we must imagine that few citizens were attentive enough to the news to learn that her award had shrunk by perhaps an order of magnitude.
Phase 5: symbolic Stella [December 5, 1994-] Once her case settled amid little fanfare, a fifth phase began. Long before this fifth stage, proponents of tort reform and wags had appropriated the coffee verdict to support their claims and cause. Once Liebeck settled, she ceased to exist as a person for most of us and became a symbol. I suspect that, because coverage of the verdict itself dwarfed subsequent developments, Stella Liebeck now represents a tort system out of control. People who no longer associate her name with her case believe that they possess an important piece of evidence in a policy debate. To the extent that Stella is now a captive of the first stage of her story--the part that the media covered--the real Stella has been supplanted by the symbolic. Since McDonald's announced the settlement on December 1, 1994, Symbolic Stella has starred in discussions of the "Contract With America," in articles about a second McDonald's suit about hot coffee, and in the "Ann Landers" advice column. These political and cultural dialogues keep the story of Stella, as opposed to Stella's story, before people attentive to newspapers.
A tentative hypothesis The cultural kidnapping of Stella Liebeck qualifies, it seems to me, a tentative hypothesis. Even the formal institution of the Liebeck case made little news. However, an output of that case–that is, the $3 million verdict–dominated coverage initially. Adjustments, corrections and subsequent events never caught up with these initial, flawed reports. As the Liebeck case submerged anew, the actual, public outcome of her litigation was lost. Now, a mythic outcome endures. Had Stella Liebeck's story arrested attention before or during the trial of her complaint, some or many misconceptions about the nature of her litigation might have been avoided. Civil cases tend to surface at news worthy points, then dive back into obscurity. However, the case of Stella Liebeck's coffee resurfaces often, I have observed, in mass media, in legislative debates, in entertainment, on the Internet and in conversation. If cases symbolize some putative social trend, it seems, they can emerge and not submerge. Stella’s case has persisted as an object lesson against frivolous lawsuits and as a legal legend despite efforts to debunk errant reports of the case, despite the severe "down-sizing" of damages, and despite efforts of many restaurants to reduce the temperature of coffee and especially hot chocolate. "The Case of the Scalding Coffee" reminds us anew of the wisdom of the 1960s intellectual Jacques Ellul: The utterly uninformed citizen is safe from propaganda, while the diligent reader endangers herself or himself with every bit of lore he or she picks up. William Haltom is a Puget Sound professor of politics and government. His most recent book, Reporting on the Courts: How Mass Media Cover Judicial Actions, was published by Nelson-Hall in 1998. If you are interested in learning more about this topic, Professor Haltom recommends these readings:
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Have you slandered Stella Liebeck lately?